Turning trauma into art

Coiled like huge nests, or giant swirls of ice cream, two aluminium sculptures hang from the ceiling. On the walls are framed drawings with accompanying text. The drawings are delicate, organic forms, spiralling circles, cones and wavy lines.

The text unfolds a narrative in which a child, on the cusp of adolescence, witnesses a confrontation between his parents, an event that terrifies the boy, but to which his mute response is to take a broom and start sweeping.

Louise Bourgeois, who has often talked of the influence on her work of the childhood trauma of discovering her father was having an affair, then cites the importance of the sublimation of difficult emotions to the creative impulse. She ends by writing of the 'gift of sublimation' and how the artist 'is blessed with this power'.

The work throws up all the old chestnuts about creativity, which are simplistically explored here. But is trauma a sufficient, or even necessary, prerequisite for making art?

In fact, Bourgeois's own experiences and the narrative here both recall LP Hartley's The Go Between, in which a boy also makes an unpleasant discovery of a similar nature. As an adult, he recalls the events that marked him, and how he never became the writer he had hoped to be. The paradox is that he becomes an artist by recounting his story - though not, like Bourgeois, ad infinitum.

Until Mar 12, Hauser & Wirth, 196a Piccadilly W1, Tue to Sat 10am to 6pm, free. Tel: 020 7287 2300. Tube: Piccadilly Circus