Known for her autobiographical and self-revelatory work, Tracey Emin is one of Britain’s most respected and revered artists of the 21st century. Using immense personal disclosure, Emin produces work using a variety of mediums from drawing and painting to photography and film, her infamous neon texts, sewn appliqué and her life-size installations.
Born July 3rd, 1963, in Surrey, England Emin grew up in Margate with an early life that played out rather brokenly. Living in a seaside hotel with her mother and mother, Emin claims she was treated like a princess and it was only when her father, who was Turkish, stopped living with them for half the week and left to live permanently with his other wife and family, taking all their money and leaving her mother completely bankrupt that life began to show it’s darker side to her. Continuing from this devastating burden, the young Tracey along with her mother and brother lived in poverty.
Emin left Margate to start her studies and chose fashion at the Medway College of Design where her intimate relationship with the avant-garde personality Billy Childish was the foundational beginnings that would play a very influential part in her maturing as an artist and creator. Following their breakup in 1987, she decided to move to London, where she graduated with an MA in painting at the Royal College of Art in 1989. The few years following her graduation proved a difficult time for her and she went through an emotionally traumatic period which included two abortions. During this arduous stretch she destroyed her entire portfolio of work from her time at the Royal College in an impulsive act of self-rebellion.
Her time in London gained her the reputation as a bit of a badass, befriending other artists of the time who would later become known as the Young British Artists, a group which included other majorly successful artists like Damien Hirst and Sarah Lucas. This budding group gained massive recognition thanks to Charles Saatchi who is often credited with their discovery. He bought their entire collections from the beginning, showcasing them as a group at his gallery in March 1992 which he titled “Young British Artists”. Saatchi’s support played a major role in landing them in front of the contemporary art scene, with the value of their work instantly skyrocketing as a direct result of the Saatchi effect. Anything he supports becomes ‘valuable’ overnight. The Young British Artists - or the YBA’s as they were referred to - became so infamous that they are now understood as an actually historical reference for the time.
Some of Emin’s most celebrated and remembered works are Everyone I Have Ever Slept With 1963-1995 which she created in 1995 as a shout out to everyone she ever a bed with, sexually or otherwise. For the piece she embroidered every name in her own handwriting on a sheet. Another of her greatest pieces was My Bed (1998) which she was nominated for the Turner Prize in 1999 for - one of the art world’s most notable accolades. It was a turn of events seeing as just two years prior she had appeared on a television program about the Prize as an institution where she showed up on live TV drunk and aggressive, swearing on live British TV in front of a panel of art academics. The piece though was utterly important - inspire of it’s overt controversial nature. It was bed - as it stood during a depressive phase of her life in which she personally spent four full days in bed eating nothing and wrinkly heavily. It showed everything from sexual stains and pubes to empty bottles and a mess that that mirrored her mental state at the time. It was received with gravely critical reviews and the age old claim that “well anyone can make that”.. to which she cleverly responded “Well, they didn’t, did they?”.
Despite not winning, her nomination was something of a moment as her piece, portrayed the dire situation she found herself in personally and it played on emotions of a dark nature - something completely related to many who suffer with mental health. It played a huge part in catapulting her to fame and the piece’s notoriety has continued to this day. Another of her more recent pieces is a neon light sculpture at St. Pancreas International Station in London. The 20-meter long installation greets travellers with the words “I want my time with you” as they enter the station.
Tracey Emin has exhibited extensively including major solo shows at Château La Coste in France, Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, Musée d’Orsay in Paris, Museum of Contemporary Art in Miami, Museo de Arte Latinoamericano in Buenos Aires, Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art in Edinburgh among many others. She represented Great Britain at the 52nd Venice Biennale, an honour in which she invited to show a commissioned body of work as a solo exhibitor at the British Pavilion, titled Borrowed Light.
Marking her true arrival and finally gaining a seat at the table of high-brow British artists, she was made a Royal Academician at London's Royal Academy of the Arts in 1997, a moment in which she was undoubtedly and ultimately accepted by the establishment. Emin has also been named as one of the most powerful women in Britain and awarded a CBE for her services to the arts in 2013.
From an impoverished childhood, smeared with experiences children should never be subjected to gaining recognition as one of the top contemporary artists of our time, Emin - intelligent and wounded - has settled slightly in her controversial ways. However, she continues to work with an astonishing sense of urgency and determined vision that continues to push the boundaries of society and what is deemed “normal” despite her personal life and appearances lessening in their sensationalist ways. She is represented by White Cube and will open another major solo exhibition, entitled The Loneliness in the spring of 2020 at Oslo’s Munch Museum. Following that she is set to unveil her permanent public commission The Mother for Oslo’s Museum Island. The exhibition will later tour to the RA, London in November 2020.
