Last weekend I visited The Wapping Project for the first time. Built in 1890, this extraordinary and beautiful building was originally the Wapping Hydraulic Power Station, but is now a restaurant and contemporary art space. Some of the machinery from the original power station is still in situ in the very tempting-looking restaurant, which unfortunately I didn't get chance to sample on this occasion, though I'm looking forward to going back to try it another time. As well as the restaurant, the venue houses the Boiler House - an exhibition/installation space - and an art bookshop housed in a greenhouse,as well as outdoor artworks.

The installation currently in the Boiler House is no less extraordinary than the building itself. Yohji Making Waves is a single-piece, site-specific installation created by fashion designer and artist Yohji Yamamoto, in collaboration with scenographer Masao Nihei. In this work, the cavernous, darkened Boiler House space is flooded with water, and a beautiful, oversized silk wedding dress (an iconic piece taken from the designer's autumn/winter 1998 collection) is suspended above it, reappearing as a ghostly reflection in the dark, rippling waters. The space is lit by a string of bulbs sending glimmering light out across the water, a haunting soundtrack plays, and visitors can take a closer look at the dress by clambering aboard a small boat, which a boatman rows around the flooded gallery at regular intervals.

There's something both mesmeric and meditative about this atmospheric installation. But although there's an eerily beautiful quality to the black depths of the water, and spectral floating dress, there's also something hugely fun and anarchic about the very idea of flooding a gallery and rowing around it in a boat. In this way, as well as being contemplative, this is an enchantingly playful installation: it's little wonder that our fellow gallery visitors were beaming with delight as they hopped aboard the little boat and set off across the water.

The installation is the third element of a series of exhibitions devoted to Yamamoto's work in London this summer: the others, which I haven't had chance to visit as yet, are Yohji's Women, an exhibition of photographs at The Wapping Project Bankside, and of course Yohji Yamamoto, a major solo exhibition at the V&A. However, whether or not you're a fan of Yamamoto, I'd highly recommend visiting this installation: one of the most imaginative and appealing pieces of contemporary art I've seen for some time.

It's surprisingly difficult to find details of the installation online, but it is open daily -  Monday - Friday from 12 noon - 10pm and Saturday-Sunday from 10am. Boat rides take place every 15 minutes. The installation is free to enter but a ticket is required for the boat.

Yohji Making Waves is at the Wapping Project until 10 July 2011.

[Image by Madeline Graham via Flickr used under Creative Commons]

I really enjoyed taking a slow wander around Tate Modern's Joan Miró exhibition this week. Galleries often describe their exhibitions as a 'must-see' but for me, this show really was. I've always loved the deep, powerful colours of Miró's paintings  and I'm endlessly intrigued by his spidery, fantastical shapes and symbols, so it's no wonder that this exhibition has been in my calendar for a while.

This is a very comprehensive retrospective, bringing together more than 150 paintings, drawings, sculptures and prints from moments across the six decades of Miró's career. Interestingly, it also traces the more politically engaged aspects of his work, tracing the development of his artistic practice in relation to political and social upheaval during the Spanish Civil War, the Second World War and in Franco's Spain.  In a more straightforward way, however, this work is also a great pleasure simply to explore and experience: for me, the especial highlights were the incredible black and white Barcelona Series, but also the meditative, colour-saturated Bleu triptych.

Miró is at Tate Modern until 11 September 2011.

Giveaway!

To celebrate this exhibition at Tate Modern, I'm excited to have a lovely Tate Miró calendar to give away courtesy of Flame Tree Publishing, as well as a beautiful calendar from Tate's Watercolour exhibition over at Tate Britain, which I blogged about back here.

If you'd like to enter the giveaway to win one of the calendars, simply leave me a comment at the end of this post to tell me what exhibition, event or other cultural happening coming up in the next few months you'll be putting in your calendar.

As well as telling me what cultural highlight is your 'must-see', don't forget to include whether you would prefer the Watercolour or the Miró calendar. From all the comments, two whinners will be selected at random - each will receive one of the two calendars.

The closing date for the giveaway is Friday 24 June. I'm looking forward to hearing your suggestions!

[Image: Joan Miró The Escape Ladder 1940. Museum of Modern Art, New York © Joan Miró and Fundació Joan Miró, Barcelona, via Tate]

I had mixed feelings about going to see Tracey Emin’s new solo show, Love is What You Want, at the Hayward Gallery last week. It’s difficult not to feel slightly bored by Emin, who along with her fellow YBAs, often just seems overexposed. Endlessly characterised as making work that is cynical and crass, more concerned with the pursuit of notoriety than artistic integrity, Emin is overdone. Every detail of her life – from the traumatic events of her childhood to her political views – is well-known and well-documented. What is there left to discover about Tracey Emin?

Yet in spite of these misgivings, I also found myself unexpectedly interested in this new opportunity to engage with Emin's work, as opposed to her media persona - especially given that I hadn't previously seen much of her work in a gallery setting. Love is What You Want provides the ideal opportunity for a re-appraisal, being a comprehensive and beautifully-curated survey of Emin’s entire career to date, bringing together work in a wide range of different media.

It was this incredible variety of work that initially struck me about this exhibition. Emin is well-known for making certain kinds of work, perhaps most famously her distinctive quilts and other embroidered pieces such as the 'tent' Everyone I Have Ever Slept With 1963-1995. However, there’s a much broader range of work to explore here, from film and video pieces to sculpture to photography to painting to printmaking.

I was also struck by the recurring use of text throughout so many of Emin’s work: this is an exhibition rife with language and storytelling, from the bold, mis-spelled appliquéd slogans of her blankets, to her glitzy neon lettering, to her handwritten texts. It’s interesting that Emin isn’t often thought of as an artist who works with language, given that this exhibition proves her to be a powerful storyteller: as she herself points out ‘it’s my words that actually make my art quite unique’.

Throughout the exhibition, it is clear that Emin’s own life is always the starting point for her art, which is confessional as often as it is confrontational. Although some of the subject matter of these highly personal, hard-hitting works remains for me difficult – pouring over ephemera related to traumatic events such as her botched abortion can’t help but leave the viewer with an uncomfortable (and no doubt, deliberately so) sense of grubby voyeurism – there’s no doubt that these are thought-provoking pieces. However solipsistic and manipulative her work sometimes seems, there is a playful sense of humour at work here too. It’s difficult not to admire Emin’s strikingly irreverent and often self-parodic approach to making art, which certainly sets little store by the conventions of the fine art world.

Ultimately though, it was the jaunty, hand-crafted, down-at-heel yet exuberantly girly aesthetic of Emin’s work which engaged me above and beyond its subject matter. There’s something particularly appealing about the rainbow colours of her blankets and upholstered chairs, the delicate embroidery, the fuzzy quality of the films, the scribbly but elegant handwriting, the cluttered ephemera, and the graceful line drawings.  From the ramshackle wooden structures of Knowing My Enemy to her spangly neon lights, the influence of Emin’s upbringing in Margate is clear – this whole show has something of the sleazy faded theatrical glamour of a seaside town.

Although I left this exhibition still with mixed feelings, I also found myself engaged, surprised and unexpectedly intrigued: for me at least, it seems that there is something new to discover in Tracey Emin's work after all.

Love is What You Want is at the Hayward Gallery until 29 August 2011. For more information visit: www.southbankcentre.co.uk/tracey