Viewing  Tracey Emin’s ode to the sleepless in Margate

A year after opening TKE Studios – her community of affordable art studios and residency spaces in Margate – Tracey Emin has gathered together works by female identifying artists who work there in a show bluntly titled, We Do Not Sleep. The British artist is a long-term insomniac and the idea of rest has taken on new meaning for her after her battles with cancer, encouraging her to think of the plight of other women, especially mothers, and how sleep is a rare luxury for them. “Women who have children, they don’t sleep – they’re awake the whole time,” she told art historian Katy Hessel, in a talk at the former bath house. “Every woman who’s a mother has to do that. It’s like torture… then they have to look good too.”

Alongside portraits of women in various states of action or repose by artists including Laura Footes, Joline Kwakkenbos and Vanessa Raw, are several large-scale drawings by Emin herself. “I like the freshness of them, I like the spontaneity of them,” says the artist, who had no pre-planned notion of what the outcome of the works would be when she began working. “I didn’t know that they were going to look so Freddy Krueger and so violent and so painful.” As well as the trials of sleep deprivation, Emin also spoke about the liberation insomnia can bring. “If you’re happy and you have insomnia, God has given you 24 hours a day – it’s an amazing thing.” For the insomniacs among us – of which there are several on team Wick – this show both resonates and uplifts.