There is a bold sensual newcomer among the artefacts scattered within the sun dappled woodland of Jupiter Artland, off the A71 at Wilkieston.
I Lay Here for You, a six metre bronze figure, is a feature of Tracey Enim’s first solo exhibition in Scotland since her retrospective at the Scottish Gallery of Modern Art in 2008.
To say the least, the years since then have been a challenging journey for Tracey. Success and adulation were cruelly followed by the cancer with which she was diagnosed as recently as 2020. Now well on the road to recovery, much of the pain, humiliation and personal grief she experienced is sensitively reflected in the display of lithographs and acrylics on canvas on show in Jupiter Artland’s ballroom.
Captions such as You Just Kept Wanting Me, Empty Heart and It Was All About Love simply cry out for attention.
“People look down on artists who move from one discipline to another but I love it,” says Tracey triumphantly as a chill breeze ripples through the clearing she had personally chosen for her prostrate bronze. With a defiant gesture, she threw on her shiny black leather coat and set off for the house.
The smoothness, texture and warmth of the supple metal body ignores the onlooker, turning inward, a stance deliberately taken by the artist in defiance of the vulnerability of her condition. Survival among the mature beech trees and through the seasons of this remarkable encapsulation of art in the West Lothian landscape is something to be loudly applauded.
I Lay Here For You: www.jupiterartland.org/art/tracey-emin/
