Are people’s reactions to Tracey Emin: A Second Life more interesting than Tracey Emin: A Second Life?

It’s busy. People of all ages have flocked here. It’s Wednesday and it’s sold out. In Tracey’s 1995 video ‘Why I didn’t become a dancer’ she recalls being asked to grab a guy’s balls for the first time during sex. At that moment, a five year old child screams and I realise people have brought their kids to see this.

Her power is indisputable—she’s brave, boundary breaking, outrageous. She broke the mould. Female experience centre stage. Her real retrospective is a good sweep-stop tour of her work, including sculpture, video, neon, photography, textiles, drawing, painting, installation. I leave inspired by Emin, and nonplussed by the Tate’s curating. It was great, full of life and energy, until it wasn’t. Dark blue walls behind ‘My Bed’— a bit, middle class? Tate-ified, but not very Tracey?

We all know Tracey’s deal by now. She is raw, unfiltered [insert any number of adjectives.] She uses art as a jagged tool to jut against social convention. She disrupts any last remnants of Victorian properness or prudeness. Yes, we should be talking about abortions.

Tracey’s freedom of self encourages the same in her viewers. I’m sure most visitors wouldn’t normally swear in a visitors book. Tracey loosens us up, and it’s about time.

But the most interesting part of Tracey Emin: A Second Life is the visitor book at the end.