Tracey Emin: 20 Years at the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art.

Visiting this retrospective was primarily valuable because it confirmed for me that I just don't rate Tracey Emin. When someone's whole shtick is an emotional outpouring, it's a bit of a problem if the viewer doesn't feel anything. I didn't hate the art, I just didn't care about most of it; instead I walked around the exhibition feeling uninvolved and rather bored.

The problem is that Emin's work is so autobiographical that it's like reading someone else's diary or worse, being grabbed by the collar and forced to listen to a drunken rendition of someone else's tedious problems.

I suspect that to be a great artist, you need to transcend the self and tap into something bigger. Emin seems - so far - to be unable to take that leap. I learnt that she loved her gran; that she has a cat; that her dad brings her flowers; that one of her abortions was traumatic; that her bed got messy and that her favourite uncle died in a car crash - but I didn't learn anything new about myself or the human condition. In my opinion, art needs to connect with the viewer, to touch something in them, to resonate, to disturb or to enlighten: apart from one work, Emin's art did none of this for me.

For something that purports to be going deep, her work is remarkably stuck on the surface. I was reading textile pieces that said things like, "I feel so fucking lonely" and thinking, "yeah, we all do sometimes, so what?"

There were a couple of pieces that I responded to, mostly her later work, which suggests that she may be improving. I sort of liked her rickety rollercoaster, the newer white and cream blankets and the little monoprints of birds but even these were nothing to write home about.

That said, I do appreciate the casual and forthright use of stitching on her signature appliquéd blanket pieces. I've always liked the way that Emin uses textiles in such a confident fashion - unlike many other female artists working with stitch (myself included!) she never seems to get hung up on the domestic and feminine history of fabric; she just cracks on and does it with a 'sod anyone who thinks sewing isn't real art' attitude! I am grateful to her for that because I think she makes it easier for the rest of us.

Tracey Emin: Hellter Fucking Skelter

The piece I liked best was a video work from 1995, the well-known, Why I Never Became A Dancer. The story of her early teenage sexuality and how she was punished for it strongly resonated with me. The tattered, grainy images of Margate shot on Super 8 film are very evocative and the ending, where Emin dances her heart out in defiance of those who tormented her, is genuinely filled with hope and joy. There's something more than pure autobiography here and if Emin could access that more often, she might become the talented artist she seems to think she is. But as it stands, it's the only really good piece in the whole retrospective.

For me the major problem is the literalness of Emin's work; if she could take her raw emotions and her autobiographical objects and transform them into something greater than the sum of their parts then it might work. As it is, I'm not sure that what she's doing is even art: most of the time it feels more like art therapy - just an exhibitionist museum to the self. In short, I feel that on leaving an exhibition, my dominant thought should not be, "well hey, at least she has great tits!"

I've always thought that Emin could be good if she could just get the hell over herself. It's interesting to compare her to someone like Louise Bourgeois, who has also extensively and obsessively mined her emotions and her past but to far greater and more lasting effect. I once saw a show of Bourgeois' art at the Serpentine that disturbed me so much that half way through I had to go outside for some fresh air. On the evidence of this show, Emin has a long way to go before she'll have the same effect.

If you want to see it, the exhibition is on at the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art in Edinburgh until November 9th.

A ROUND UP OF OTHER REVIEWS

Rather damning review from The Times and a slightly more sympathetic one from The Herald.

Emin talking about the work to The Sunday Herald.

Problematic interview with the artist where she comes across as infuriatingly arrogant. This bit made me particularly loopy!

Some people might find an unmade bed studenty and corny. But Emin is absolutely adamant that "taste cannot get mixed up with what's good and what's bad". There is a definite standard. Quality control. But presumably there are great artists out there, undiscovered? "No. They'd have made it if they were any good." I wonder how she can possibly say that. It shows enormous faith in the establishment for someone supposedly so anarchic. "Why would I be anti-establishment when the establishment is so good to me?" she demands.

This is just so monumentally stupid - being good at playing the art world game is NOT the same as being a good artist.

I went along to the Spike Island Open on Friday evening. Unfortunately I wasn't really in the mood, so I didn't get as much out of it as I'd hoped. However, there were some artists who impressed me...

Ceramicist Karen Welsh was showing an unsettling series of domestic porcelain featuring little doll hands and feet. I especially loved the tiny little milk jugs with a hand instead of a handle. Unfortunately the only photos I could find were tiny, so you'll have to go to her website to look.

I've been aware of Philippa Lawrence's work for a while now, ever since I saw her stunning gilded lightbulbs in [AN] Magazine a few years ago.

Philippa Lawrence: Glow

For this event, she was showing some wonderful melted lightbulbs (they'd clearly been slumped in a kiln) and large photographs of her wrapped tree pieces.

Philippa Lawrence: Bound

Keep an eye on this one, she's definitely an artist to watch!

Patrick Haines makes gorgeous cast sculptures based on birds and deliciously spiky houses from thorn branches. I love his stuff because he such has a light hand: his work captures the essence of birds, rather than being literal and boring copies. As a birdwatcher, I appreciate this feeling of a bird that's only just alighted on a branch and is just about to flit off again - there's a real sense of movement in his work.

Patrick Haines: Blackthorn and Swallow

Nicola Donovan was my favourite artist of the night, she makes edgy works in textile that references clothing and childhood toys and her sinister but funny fetish rats made from black vinyl and leather knocked me for six. Unfortunately they're so new that they're not online yet (I overheard her telling someone that she'd finished the last one the night before the private view - btdt!). She makes works with pins too.

Nicola Donovan: The fur sedition-21st century silver fox

Kate Raggett was showing her latest works, ink drawings based on visits to sacred landscapes. I'm a big fan of her drawings, I own a small one and it's my favourite piece in my art collection. I couldn't find an example of her most recent drawings but this is typical of her work.

Kate Raggett: Discatom

Jessica Bartlett makes exquisite drawings by burning images of natural forms into thickly primed canvas.

Jessica Bartlett: Feather

Invariably, there were several other artists that I wanted to showcase but who don't have an online presence - their loss!

Despite the heat, I managed to get over to Sydney to visit the Museum of Contemporary Art today. There are currently two exhibitions on: Force Field, a retrospective by Australian artist, Fiona Hall and an exhibition of Aboriginal Bark Paintings.

This was the first time that I'd seen Fiona Hall's work and I had mixed feelings about it. The pieces I liked the most were the ones where her technique and obvious skill worked in conjunction with her ideas rather than being overwhelmed by them.

I found the pieces made from tupperware consistently witty and engaging. My favourite installation in the show was Cell Culture, a vitrine containing abstract animal forms made from tupperware and thousands of beads. Being able to recognise many specifically Australian birds and animals added an extra dimension to the work for me and I'm sure I enjoyed it more than I would have before I visited Australia.

Fiona Hall: Cell Culture

This image was too wide and I'm working on an unfamiliar laptop and don't fancy hunting for editing software, so just click on it for the bigger version.

Fiona Hall: Cell Culture, detail

I also enjoyed an installation that featured a wall of tupperware containing lights that blinked on and off in sequence - simple, yet strangely hypnotic.

Paradisus Terestris, her large series of sardine tins containing metal reliefs of human body parts that blossom out into intricately cut metal plants was also enticing.

Fiona Hall: Paradisus Terestris

This work reminded me of The Song of Songs in the Bible - using plants to describe the human figure or vice versa is an ancient story but one that Hall manages to make refreshing here through sheer audacity of technique; you can hardly believe the detail and the fineness of cutting involved in the plants, while the parts of human figures are breathtaking in their minimalist assurance.

Two large installations containing multiples cast in yellow soap also caught my attention, as did the nests made from shredded bank notes and some very beautiful goache paintings of trade plants on bank notes. For me, Hall is at her best when making sculpture, although I also enjoyed her etchings, drawings and some of the photograph and video pieces.

Unfortunately, her work didn't always quite hit the mark and although there was much that engaged and amused me, there was nothing that absolutely knocked me dead. Her work was often just a little bit too obvious for my tastes; I felt that she often spoilt the work by over-egging the pudding. For example, a set of figurative sculptures made from knitted video tape seemed fairly effective until I noticed that the images related far too directly to the film they'd been made from - i.e. a foot coming out of the box for the film, They Died With Their Boots On. I prefer work to be a little more mysterious and I don't mind having to work at understanding art - generally, I'm far more tolerant of ambiguity than I am of being preached at and I felt that Hall's work fell into the didactic far too often. She is clearly an artist who is strongly engaged with her subject matter - colonialism; sexuality and the interaction between people and the environment - but I personally believe that it's a mistake to let your politics overwhelm your art.

There are a couple of interesting articles about the artist here and here. This quote made me laugh:

"I'm just relieved that I live in an era where, particularly for women, it's easy to have a life as an artist. Otherwise I don't know what I would be good for," Hall says.

Boy can I relate to that!

The exhibition runs until 1st June 2008 and despite my reservations, I do think it's well worth a visit if you're in the Sydney area. This post is already quite long and it's late here, so I'll save the review of the other exhibition for another day.