The sweeter side of Tracey

Tracey Emin has such a visceral and direct way of using language that any review sounds hopelessly lame by comparison. There's such screwed-up force behind her misspelt words that the only way to compete is to imagine the following stitched (with blood, sweat and tears) on to a rough old blanket:

EMIN'S SHOW
NOT BAD
THEY SAID SHE WAS PANTS
BUT IT'S STILL WORTH SEEING
YEAH
COOL PRINTS AND VIDEO

Despite the tsunami of media hype preceding this exhibition, everything you need to know about Emin's gilded gutter life is here in the work.

These new pieces are business as usual: dyslexically slogan-ridden blankets, agonised scratchy monoprints, schizophrenic videos and mindlessly pretty neon signs. The blankets have lost the chaotic, urgent density they once had. This is probably down to Emin now shipping the work off to her step-mum to make - a reflection of her

more organised lifestyle. In this light, the persistent misspellings (such as "beleave") feel even more contrived.

Then there's the helter-skelter sculpture, a clattery wooden object that goes under the name of "self-portrait", presumably to reflect the ups and downs of her life (one minute she's on TV, the next she's drunk before millions; one minute she's lost the Turner Prize, the next she's modelling for Vivienne Westwood). The metaphorical is an unusual new direction for Emin, who usually tends to relate the events of her life without symbolism. For example, her Westwood adverts are reworked in gritty monoprints: dolled up in her ballgown, legs akimbo, drunk in the gutter.

Whatever you think of Emin's public persona, her scratchy little expressions of sex and degradation are wonderful - perhaps because they're clearly something she still makes herself. But what always remains surprising is how her wretched and pornographic self-image is undercut with girlish romanticism: some of the best works in the show are prints on calico, partially embroidered with captions like "always wanting you - love Trace".

The same sweetness infuses her video housed in a birdhouse up a stepladder: a jolly round man advancing through head-high foliage, beaming away as he pushes an exuberant pink flower in your face. It makes you beam back. In an art world of sneering irony and deadpan alienation, this little video is a gift.