WHAT? Tracey Emin - I followed you to the end 

WHERE? White Cube, 144-152 Bermondsey Street, London SE1 3TQ

WHEN? Now until 10th November.  Free to view 

WHY GO?  To be challenged.  Even this monumental gallery seems to shrink when presented with the full-on intensity of Tracey Emin’s powerful visceral paintings, even more so with a new bronze sculpture on show for the first time in this exciting solo exhibition. 

Ahead of the Frieze London Art Fair, this is an emotional tribute to one of the UK’s leading artists who is as famous for her avant garde approach to life as for her unique, raw, unfiltered artworks that say it like it is in no uncertain terms. 

“The most beautiful thing is honesty, even if it’s painful to look at” she says and some of the intimate paintings on show are profoundly painful and personal, referring to her brush with death and rebirth.  The exhibition’s header I followed you to the end is shrouded in ambiguity referencing a great many things in her life but most importantly Emin is grateful to be alive and working ever more vigorously back in her hometown of Margate. 

From her famous ruffled bed (1998) to these new reflective paintings of beds with abstract bloodied figures sprawled askew, Emin delivers some of her most personal paintings to date. 

With names like Blood and More Blood they offer up much to contemplate and beg to be seen, but perhaps not by little ones. The gallery suggests children are kept in hand.

IN THE KNOW  Tracey Emin was awarded a Damehood for her services to art in this year’s King’s Birthday Honours.  ‘Dame Tracey has a ring about it.  It gives me a louder voice to do things that I think are important’, she says whilst working towards further developing The Tracey Emin Artist’s Residency (TEAR) a free study-based art school programme.