Tracey Emin’s art is one of disclosure, using her life events as inspiration for works ranging from painting, drawing, video and installation, to photography, needlework and sculpture. Emin reveals her hopes, humiliations, failures and successes in candid and, at times, excoriating work that is frequently both tragic and humorous.
Emin’s work has an immediacy and often sexually provocative attitude that firmly locates her oeuvre within the tradition of feminist discourse. By re-appropriating conventional handicraft techniques – or ‘women’s work’ – for radical intentions, Emin’s work resonates with the feminist tenets of the ‘personal as political’. In Everyone I’ve Ever Slept With, Emin used the process of appliqué to inscribe the names of lovers, friends and family within a small tent, into which the viewer had to crawl inside, becoming both voyeur and confidante. Her interest in the work of Edvard Munch and Egon Schiele particularly inform Emin’s paintings, monoprints and drawings, which explore complex personal states and ideas of self-representation through manifestly expressionist styles and themes.
Tracey Emin was born in London in 1963, and studied at Maidstone College of Art and the Royal College of Art, London. She has exhibited extensively internationally, including solo and group exhibitions in Holland, Germany, Switzerland, Spain, Japan, Australia, The United States and Chile. In 2008 Emin held her first major retrospective at the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, which subsequently toured to Malaga (2008) and Bern in 2009. In 2007 Emin represented Britain at the 52nd Venice Biennale, was made a Royal Academician and was awarded an Honorary Doctorate from the Royal College of Art, London, a Doctor of Letters from the University of Kent and Doctor of Philosophy from London Metropolitan University. She lives and works in London.


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| Artworks | |
![]() | I 4 Images |
![]() | II 4 Images |
![]() | III 4 Images |
![]() | IV 4 Images |
![]() | V 5 Images |
![]() | VI 4 Images |
![]() | VII 4 Images |
![]() | VIII 4 Images |
| Videos/Audio | |
![]() | Tracey Emin, White Cube Mason's Yard 2009 Video |
| Related Texts | |
| CV | |
| Bibliography | |
| Tracey Emin: Flying High by Sarah Kent | |
| Tracey Emin: a Particular Honesty by Rudi Fuchs | |
| God, Art and Tracey Emin by Neal Brown | |
| Exhibitions | |
| Those who suffer Love 29 May—4 Jul 2009 | |
| When I Think about Sex... 27 May—25 Jun 2005 | |
| You forgot to kiss my soul 27 Apr—26 May 2001 | |
| My Major Retrospective 1963-1993 19 Nov—9 Jan 1994 | |
| Editions | |
| Illustrations From Memory 1994 Edition of 50 | |
| Suffer Love II Tracey Emin | |
| Artist's Publications | |
| Tracey Emin 1998 | |
| Artist's Publications Available in the Bookshop |
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| Monoprint Diaries 2009 | |
| those who suffer love 2009 | |
| Related Links | |
| http://www.illuminationsmed... Eye Series of films by Illuminations | |
| http://www.saatchi-gallery.... Saatchi Gallery, London | |
| http://www.lehmannmaupin.co... Lehmann Maupin Gallery, New York | |
| http://www.vam.ac.uk/collec... Victoria and Albert Museum, London | |
| http://www.tate.org.uk/brit... Tate Online | |
| Back to Artist Index |