This winter sees the opening of The Loneliness of the Soul, a groundbreaking new exhibition at London’s Royal Academy, showcasing the work of Tracey Emin alongside paintings by her great hero Edvard Munch.

Munch’s work has long inspired Emin, from her early video piece Homage to Edvard Munch and All My Dead Children to her monumental new nine-metre high bronze sculpture, The Mother, set to be installed outside Oslo’s new Munch Museum in spring 2021. Today, the majority of her time is spent painting.

This documentary charts the affinities between Munch’s art and Emin’s, exploring the many unexpected ways that this godfather of expressionism resonates with one of Britain’s pre-eminent artists.

Alongside Emin’s voice, which runs like a thread throughout the documentary, we hear from art historians and curators in Norway, showing the innovations in printmaking and sculpture that Munch pioneered in his lifetime alongside his more well-known painting work.

We see inside the homes where he created his work, still perfectly preserved today. We also find out more about Munch’s photographic and film work, media not normally associated with the artist but within which can be found clear correspondences with Emin’s work. These scenes are complemented by footage of one of Emin’s new monumental bronze sculptures being forged in a foundry in Stoke-on-Trent, and the works of Emin and Munch shown together at the Royal Academy. Show less