When Tracey Emin first appeared among us — mouthy, disruptive, selfish, often drunk, a terrible speller — no one could have imagined that one day she would open her own art school and that this art school would nurse ambitions that are traditional and nostalgic. But there you go. With time comes wisdom, and with wisdom comes a need to pass on what you have learnt.
The wild woman of old who banged on relentlessly about abortions, love rats and the joys of sex is now a memory. Emin is a Royal Academician, a figurative painter, a cancer survivor and — toot the trumpets — a dame, freshly ennobled in the latest honours list. When the scribes sit down to write her chronicles, they will need plenty of vellum for the later chapters.
As a scribe myself, I set off for her bailiwick of Margate, where the town’s prodigal daughter grew up and to which she has now returned, unsure of what would greet me. Having visited the Tracey Karima Emin Studios at their inception in March 2023 and viewed the first intake of students, I was keen to see where 15 months of backseat driving from Margate’s mouthiest had led them. Graduation had rushed up in the fast lane. Had the intake survived?
Emin wasn’t the only teacher at the school. Assorted locums of repute had trekked down to the Kent sands for a stint at the blackboard. But with Emin it’s her way or no way. She is, and always has been, astonishingly self-centred. The TKE Studios were many things — a free art school, a residency in Margate, a chance to learn — but above all they were her idea of how art schools should be run: a riposte to other art schools.
In this last ambition she has my tearful support. Thank you, Tracey. Since the Thatcher era, when their grants were sliced and their ambitions rerouted, Britain’s art schools have grown monstrously unartistic. The emphasis today is on business progress rather than creative adventure. Gone are the days when you went to art school and ended up as Ridley Scott or Keith Richards. The magic and pleasure have been sucked out of artistic education.
Instead of learning to draw and paint, today’s Artemisias and Pablos are force-fed a grim gruel of post-structuralist gobbledegook. And art schools cost a bomb to attend. Especially if you are a foreign student.
TKE Studios had a lot of wrongs to right. Eight students, aged generously from 24 to 36, have made it to graduation. Originally there were ten. One left of her own volition. Another was redirected through the door. The rules were strict. No smoking, no drugs, no loud music. Anything Emin tells you to do, you do. Or you’re out. Despite the bladder cancer, she was there a lot. The school was her baby, and she nursed it.
At the start of the process, she interviewed the applicants herself. Half were from abroad, but that was serendipity. Although the tuition was free, there was accommodation to pay, although Emin intervened personally to ensure the terms were fair, and chipped in if required.
I was surprised to see that the opening vitrine in the graduation display contained poems not paintings. At regular intervals students had been instructed by Emin to write about themselves: to get in touch with their inner life. The poems were later turned into homemade books.
“The most important things about me will die as thoughts, they came as thoughts, and exit the same way,” one bleak graduate worried. “Hot brain, wet teeth, twitching tailbone,” began another, capturing perfectly the excitement of entering the TKE Studios. That’s the poems. Where’s the art?
The main exhibition space at the school, a light and airy rectangle, has been filled with big paintings. Ever since Emin gave up working in different media — tapestry, video, performance — and concentrated on painting, it has been clear this is where the action is for her. In her art school she has made life drawing a key part of the curriculum.
To help with the cost of materials, she auctioned her own work and gave every artist £10,000 to help their journey. Paper and charcoal for the life classes was free. The walls of the studios downstairs are busy with effortful battles with the figure. It’s the main theme as well in the graduation displays.
Anna Pakosz from Hungary presents whispery interactions between damsels and kings. They could be illustrations to a fairytale except that the damsels are naked and the interactions feel spiky, sweaty, intimate. Modern anxieties have infected the fairy story.
Emmie Nume from Uganda takes up the most space with flaying displays of figure painting that seem to have been created with the kind of hand-to-eye co-ordination you need to clear a path through a field of brambles. His paintings have the energy levels of a brawl in a bar.
You have to peer closely into Bianca Raffaella’s gorgeous figure studies to discern the shadowy nudes that lurk within them. Predominantly white, Raffaella’s art has the fragile beauty of a fresh fall of snow.
Darcy Brenna is obviously a fan of Emin’s paintings because her art has grown evidently more Emin-like as the year has progressed. Figures merge into landscapes. Seas and skies blur floatingly and moodily.
One thing the show certainly proves is that the old ways work wonders in an art school. Regular life classes and enforced poetics have had a profound effect. In almost every case there is a tangible sense of progress. Everyone has gained confidence, loosened up, improved.
I was particularly struck by the journeys of Jorge Cruz from Ecuador and Helen Teede from Zimbabwe. He has thrown open his shoulders and gone from small and stiff to big and bold. She recorded the changes during her pregnancy in a shimmering suite of poignant self-portraits.
Emin’s art school has given everyone a fabulous start. Now the real work begins.
The TKE Studios graduation show, TEARS: The Final Show, is open at weekends in Margate until September 1
