Biography

“Art is like a lover whom you run away from but who comes back and picks you up”. – Tracey Emin

Tracey Emin is one of the most famous living British artists. Known for the strong autobiographical dimensions found within her work, she draws on elements of her personal life with a raw and unapologetic authenticity. She rose to fame as a part of the loosely affiliated group, the Young British Artists in the 1990s, patroned by collector Charles Saatchi. She works across various media including painting, drawing, sculpture, neon, video and installation. Her germinal work, My Bed (1998) is a conceptual installation of Emin’s own bed in a state of disarray during a period of extreme depression. Emin was elected to be a Royal Academician in 2007. 

Emin was born in South London in 1963 but grew up in Margate. Several traumas in her early life, including a rape at the age of 13 and an abortion at 18 continued to have a lasting effect on her mental health, as well as her artistic practice. Emin graduated from the Maidstone College of Art in 1986 and pursued an MA in painting at the Royal College of Art in London in 1989. She became associated with the Young British Artists, a group who included Sarah Lucas, Damien Hirst and Angus Fairhurst. In 1994, Emin had her first solo exhibition entitled My Major Retrospective at the White Cube in London. The show featured autobiographical works including photographs, early paintings and personal found objects.

Her first significant installation Everyone I Have Ever Slept With 1963-1995 (1995) consisted of a blue tent appliquéd with all the people Emin shared a bed with, exhibited at the infamous YBA exhibition of Charles Saatchi’s Sensation in 1997 at the Royal Academy in London. In 1998, Emin created her next iconic work, My Bed, showing the artist’s own bed in a chaotic state, authentically recreated with remains of cigarettes, condoms and pieces of underwear. This artwork, which reflects on Emin’s period of severe depression, is now a part of the Tate’s permanent collection and was exhibited as part of the Turner Prize nominations in 1999.

In 2007, Emin joined the Royal Academy of Arts and represented Great Britain at the Venice Biennale. In 2011, the Hayward Gallery in London hosted a large-scale retrospective of Emin’s paintings, sculptures, videos, drawings and textiles entitled Love is What You Want. Her painting style is characterised by intuitive, gestural strokes and a blend of abstraction and figuration. Her flowing figures - often erotic, female nudes - dripping paint, fragments of confessional text and untidy lines are charged with raw, emotive power. Emin also works with neon, using illuminated signs to shape diaristic written confessions or simple poetic statements such as Sorry Flowers Die (1999) and I can feel your smile (2005). In 2005, she released a book of memoirs entitled Strangeland.

Emin not only works in paint and neon but also works with bronze, often sculpting the naked female body, channelling her personal identity and experience. Her large-scale public sculpture The Mother (2021) was installed next to the Edvard Munch museum in Oslo and her works were exhibited alongside Edvard Munch in the seminal Royal Academy duo exhibition The Loneliness of the Soul (2021) including many of Emin’s paintings and neon works.

Based in between London and Margate, Emin is one of the most influential living artists, who has impacted generations with her raw and authentic expressive power.

Tracey Emin
Tracey Emin

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