Tracey Emin

"They were asking me questions like: "Is it art?" And I was saying, "Well, if it isn't art... what the hell is it doing in an art gallery and why are people coming to look at it?" (Tracey Emin)

Comprehensive Review Emin Art

Interview

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, she will represent Britain at the Venice Biennale.

Interactive Tate Presentation

Some Works Including Video


Everyone I Have Ever Slept With, 1963-95.
© Tracey Emin
Photo: Stephen White. Courtesy Jay Joplin/White Cube, London

Review