‘Still Life with Watermelon and Other Things’ (1985) uses the same method of paint application. Similarly to her previous works, the message of the painting is that where there is excess, there is decay. A table covered in a feast is clearly shown. Siopis chose to depict fruits such as watermelon which are seen as luscious, sexual fruits. Cakes are also shown, as well as an overabundance of the passionate colour red, commenting on the sexual favours of women and how women are often willing to give up their sexual favours, but are not appreciated for it. All the food on the table is perfectly ripe and ready to eat, but there is clearly no one to appreciate it, as the background shows an abandoned room. Clearly no one is living there.
‘Patience on a Monument’ (1988) also comments on gender issues. Patience, a black women is depicted in the centre of the painting, peeling a lemon. This comments not only on her gender, but also on her place is society. She has the futile and unimportant job of preparing food, while in the background men are concerned with the colonialisation of Africa. She is merely the domesticated women and seems unconcerned, a bystander. Her left breast is exposed, which signifies her as a kind of Lady Liberty leading the people, but also highlights her sexual use for men.
‘Dora and the Other Women’ (1988) is perhaps Siopis’ best example of art that explores gender issues. The painting depicts a women standing on a box, trying to cover her naked body with white sheet, one of her breasts exposed. The white of the sheet signifies purity and virginity. The women in the painting is said to have been Ida Bauer, who was known as ‘Dora’, and was diagnosed with hysteria. This was seen as a feminine illness at the time. She is standing in a vulnerable position, which comments on how Siopis believed Bauer to be an example of women in a society shaped by men. Her position is said to have been her way of subconsciously protesting against the restrictions imposed by the male-dominated society in which she lived. The room in which ‘Dora’ stands shows a bed in the background, and a heavy velvet curtain, which presents an atmosphere of decadence.
‘Dora’ is seen as a subservient female stereotype. This is clearly shown by the covering of her face. Her identity is unimportant, but she is rather recognised for her sexual use, signified by her bare breast.
The bed and ‘Dora’s sheet are covered with images of Saartjie Baartman, a Khoi-San women who was taken to Europe to be shown as side show because of her large buttocks and flap of skin covering her genitalia. She was kept in a cage and ridiculed as a species of animal, because she was disadvantaged by race and by gender.
Similarly to ’Dora’, Saartjie is also standing on a box in the caricatures of her. She is being example by white Eurpoean men as if she were a sciencific experiment. This comments on the sexual oppression of women, and on racial oppression.
Penny Siopis is very interested in the process of aging, and this is clearly seen in her work. As a woman, she understands the fears of womanhood, as well as the sexual ways in which women are so often abused.
Part Two
Tracey Emin is notorious for speaking out about issues that are not socially acceptable as topics of conversation. Nothing is sacred for her. Tracey Emin is a woman with issues. This is clearly evident in her work, which is brash ad crude in it’s exploration around gender issues and sexual experimentation.
Emin is skilled in many different mediums. This may be because she studied Fashion Design at Medway College of Design between 1980 and 1982, followed by printing at Maidstone Art College in 1984. She then majored in painting at the Royal College of Art in London in 1987. Her different and very diverse mediums include: installation, monoprints, neon signs, photography and fabric and embroidery.
Her most famous example of installation work is her famous ‘tent’, ‘Everyone I Have Ever Slept With’(1995). It is a blue tent inside which she has embroidered, in bright colours, the names of all the people she has slept with in her lifetime. The title is ambiguous, and does not refer only to sexual partners, but rather to anyone she has ever shared a bed with, including family members and friends, and even her two aborted foetuses.
This piece, similar to most of her other art works, clearly expresses the kind of sexual freedom which people have become so accustomed to. Her art approaches issues which many women would find socially unacceptable, and shows her lack of inhibition towards sex, money and other concerns which are considered taboo.
‘My Bed’ (1999) is another example of Emin’s installation work, which was exhibited at the Tate Gallery in `99. The piece shows her bed in a very personal manner, with crumpled sheets stained with body secretions. Items have been strewn on the floor, such as used condoms, underwear dirtied with menstrual stains, cigarettes and other everyday items such as her slippers. Emin says she created this piece after feeling suicidal because of relationship issues.
There are three types of monoprints that Emin works on- those with images, those with text, and those with both. The represent a kind of diaristic aspect because they are so immediate, and often depict events from her past. For example, in her ‘Illustrations from Memory’series (1994 and 1995) she depicts images of her awakening sexuality and memories from growing up in Margate. Examples of these are ‘Fucking Down An Ally’ (1995) and ‘In the Living Room’ (1994).
Emin’s work with text often incorporates badly misspelt words. This is because Emin is a notoriously bad speller, and feels that she should rather just “get on with it” than be inhibited. It is also because on some occasions she had been drawing these pieces very hastily. An example of this is ‘There Must Be Something Terebley Wrong With Me’(1997).
In many of her exhibitions, Emin incorporates a few neon pieces, which are neon signs in the form of wording. These often explore themes of sexuality, for example ‘Is Anal Sex Legal’ and ‘Is Legal Sex Anal’ (1998). ‘You Forgot to Kiss My Soul’ (2001) depicts the title in blue neon surrounded by a neon heart. These pieces are very immediate and explore a kind of frivolity due to the easiness of their appearance, and because they are very easy on the eye. They are very sellable to people who wish to acquire Emin’s work, but find her paintings and monoprints uncomfortable because of their content. One of her donated pieces, ‘Keep Me Safe’ (2007) was auctioned for as much as £60`000.
Emin has experimented a lot with photography, often taking pictures of herself in compromising situations, such as ‘I’ve Got It All’ (2000) which depicts Emin with her legs wide open, gripping money to her crotch. This piece commented on her financial success at the time and her sexual desires with the use of her body.
‘There’s A Lot Of Money In Chairs’ (1994) is a piece that Emin constantly reused in her photography. She embroidered an upholstered that she had inherited from her grandmother and then took it with her as she toured the USA, and continually had friends photograph her sitting in it. ‘Trying On Clothes From My Friends (She Took The Shirt Off His Back)’ (1997) depicts Emin exploring her identity by trying on her friends clothes.
The last medium that Tracey Emin often works in is fabric, usually collected from old curtains and bed linen. Her most famous work in this medium is the previously mentioned ‘There’s A Lot Of Money In Chairs’, onto which she embroidered the date of her and her grandmother’s birth, as well as family names and the pet names that she and her grandmother had for each other ‘Puddin’ and ‘Plum’. She chose to give her piece the given name because it was a saying of her granmother’s, with whom she shared a close familial bond.
‘Hate And Power Can Be A Terrible Thing’ (2004) was a large quilt that commented on Magaret Thatcher in attack on young men in the Argentinian navy, as well as women who steal other women’s husbands and boyfriends, for whom Emin says she holds “no respect… women who betray and detroy the hearts of other women”.
Tracey Emin’s work, although not the least bit subtle, certainly puts across a very strong message of how she feels about important issues in her life. Her art is her way of expressing how she feels about her identity as a women. It gives one the impression that by creating these pieces she is dealing with her intense emotions. As an artist who portrays gender issues in her work, she is almost revolutionary in her experimentation with different mediums, and her lack of concern for the opinions of the general public and what they may think of her crude artistic expressions. It is for this reason, perhaps, that so many people appreciate her work.
