★★★★☆

Tracey Emin’s first show in Scotland for 14 years features a beautiful amalgam of paintings, sculpture and monographs, with the majority created across the past two years. Themes of restoration, loneliness and intimacy recur across the exhibition. Alongside a small-scale sculpture of tumbling bodies delicately placed on an ornate fireplace, a painting of an unspoiled bed hangs on the walls. As her most iconic motif, the bed nods back to Emin’s trailblazing exhibit of 1999 which divided art critics into two camps: those who considered the artist to be ‘vulgar’ (as if being ‘vulgar’ is defined as a woman elaborating on her sexual history) and others who thanked her for it. For those in the latter category, the painting ‘WET’ (2021) will be a highlight of this show. 

For more subtle and allusive renderings of a vulva, see Emin’s new series ‘Forest Of Love’. These acrylic paintings are both enchanting and fitting in the surrounding woodlands of Jupiter Artland. Of the same ilk, ‘I Keep Bleeding’ (2022) depicts a spooning couple entrapped in a bloody womb-like vacuum, staged like the memory of a past sexual experience.

^{Tracey Emin, WET, 2021}

Jupiter Artland is now the permanent resting place for Emin’s monumental sculpture, ‘I Lay Here For You’. A large-scale bronze woman lays on her stomach, as if resigned to unrequited longing, with her gaze directed inwards. The effect is such that passers-by may refrain from looking to grant her some privacy.

Characteristic of Emin’s work, the sculpture’s title is in the first person, prompting onlookers to question who the ‘you’ refers to, as well as who they might be yearning for in their own lives. Enduring the pandemic and battling bladder cancer, this show is testament to Tracey Emin’s extraordinary capacity to persevere and continue creating.

Jupiter Artland, Edinburgh, until Sunday 2 October, part of Edinburgh Art Festival.