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 lives and works in London. She has exhibited internationally including solo and group exhibitions in Holland, Germany, Japan, Australia and America. In 1999 she was short listed for the Turner Prize at the Tate Gallery, London. She has had solo shows at the Stedelijk Museum (Amsterdam), Haus der Kunst (Munich) and Modern Art Oxford in 2002. Art Gallery of New South Wales (Australia) 2003 and Platform Garanti Contemporary Art Center (Istanbul) in 2004. In 2007, Tracey represented Britain at the Venice Biennale. 'Twenty Years', her next major survey exhibition, will take place during the Edinburgh Festival at the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art in August 2008.


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| Artworks | |
![]() | sculpture II 4 Images |
![]() | monoprints 4 Images |
![]() | Neons 4 Images |
![]() | Sculpture III 5 Images |
![]() | Sewn works 4 Images |
![]() | monoprints II 4 Images |
![]() | Miscellaneous 4 Images |
![]() | Miscellaneous II 4 Images |
| 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 | |
| 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 | |
| Artist's Publications | |
| Tracey Emin 1998 | |
| Related Links | |
| http://www.lehmannmaupin.co... Lehmann Maupin Gallery, New York | |
| http://www.saatchi-gallery.... Saatchi Gallery, London | |
| http://www.tate.org.uk/brit... Tate Online | |
| http://www.vam.ac.uk/collec... Victoria and Albert Museum, London | |
| Back to Artist Index |