There is something disquieting about Margate in the off-season, winter months. The sea turns darker and the streets quiet. It is into this charged stillness that Tracey Emin brings “Crossing into Darkness,” a deeply personal, unsettling and moving exhibition at Carl Freedman Gallery.
Emin, who was brought up in Margate, left young and returned much later to install her studio there, had been invited to curate a show a while back. But it wasn´t until the current global uncertainty gave it an acute sense of urgency. The show is anchored around a historic work by Antony Gormley. You might at first overlook the slab of concrete on the ground, but it is from where the show unfolds as a response to our present times—an era marked by political fracture, humanitarian crisis and renewed awareness of the darker undercurrents of human nature. For Emin making and showing art under such conditions is not optional; it is necessary.
Many of the works carry personal weight. Works from Emin’s own collection are as unflinching and harrowing as those by the artists she has drawn into the conversation. Some of the artists are young talent who have been discovered and supported through Emin´s residency program. Others like David Altmejd’s inclusion speak to decades of friendship, stretching back to the year when both artists represented their countries at the Venice Biennale. Others again retrace decades of artistic kinship, deep resonances and loans that feel like personal thoughts, underscoring how much of the exhibition is built on shared intuition rather than purely institutional consideration.
A Séance Across Time
Installation view of Carl Freedman Gallery, “Crossing Into Darkness,” Curated By Tracey Emin. Courtesy of Carl Freedman Gallery.
Moving through the gallery one has the uncanny sensation of a séance: voices from different eras and geographies speaking across time. Three works from Goya´s Los Caprichos draw an image of chilling anguish, their historical violence echoing forward into the present. Nearby Munch’s existential intensity reverberates, while a Louise Bourgeois textile sculpture of a head with gaping mouth is strangled by its voiceless scream. At the far end of the show, a piece by Gilbert & George hangs like an infernal sentinel, framing the exhibition with a sense of hellish finality.
The Body as Witness
Installation view of Carl Freedman Gallery, “Crossing Into Darkness,” Curated By Tracey Emin. Courtesy of Carl Freedman Gallery.
Juanita McNeely’s work carries the marks of a life formed by disability and perseverance, a visceral strength underlined by the artist’s biography and recent posthumous recognition. Jolene Kwakkenbos appears with entirely new works. Their expressive and vivid compositions are stripped of vanity, unflinching and emotionally challenging, a true discovery.
“Their expressive and vivid compositions are stripped of vanity, unflinching and emotionally challenging, a true discovery.”
The arresting ceramics by Lindsey Mendick made specifically for “Crossing into Darkness,” hold a particular tension. Their forms carry a sense of horror and gravity, revealing itself from underneath their glistening white surfaces that emanates something completely ethereal. Laura Footes’ cinematic imagery suggests unstable sites of power: ambiguous structures that could be centres of political authority. A bowed female figure appears caught in disappearance, very much evoking current threats to women’s autonomy and rights, eroded by distant male-dominated systems of control.
Silence, Shelter, and the Weight of the Room
Installation view of Carl Freedman Gallery, “Crossing Into Darkness,” Curated By Tracey Emin. Courtesy of Carl Freedman Gallery.
To my great surprise I also discovered a painting by Danielle McKinney that I had recently seen in the artist´s celebrated solo-presentation in London. Depicting her signature soft domestic interiors, it shows a beautiful moment of calm in this room to oneself, holding the loud world outside at a safe and protective distance. It strongly contrasts with the more eery and loaded forces at play in the one large canvas by Tracey Emin herself.
The rooms are dim, the atmosphere heavy, decisions meticulously overseen by Emin, who personally installed the exhibition. Darkness here is not theatrical, but deliberate, intimate and moral. The exhibition is steeped in a yearning for illumination. There is an insistence on light, not as something blinding or triumphant, but as something fragile and hard-won, worth striving for.
Margate as Pilgrimage
Installation view of Carl Freedman Gallery, “Crossing Into Darkness,” Curated By Tracey Emin. Courtesy of Carl Freedman Gallery.
Margate itself feels implicated in the exhibition’s spirit. The town has become a destination, a pilgrimage site for those willing to travel for art that matters. The presence of figures from across cultural spheres, including a surprise visit from Madonna, signals how powerfully this exhibition resonates. Art here is not just an empty gesture. It is animating the town, sustaining restaurants, drawing people together and reminding visitors that cultural gravity does not belong exclusively to metropolitan centres.
“The town has become a destination, a pilgrimage site for those willing to travel for art that matters.”
“Crossing into Darkness” is ultimately not an exhibition about despair, but about endurance. It acknowledges horror without aestheticizing it and it searches for transcendence without promising salvation. Tracey Emin shows us with insistence that even in the bleakest moments, there are people still holding onto light and speaking across the void.
