Tracey Emin - Selected works

T r a c e y E m i n
S e l e c t e d W o r k s

Tracey Emin looks to her life for her primary material. With soul-searching candour, she probes the construct of the self but also the very impulse to create. Unfiltered,
irreverent, raw, she draws on the fundamental themes of love, desire, loss and grief in works that are disarmingly and unashamedly emotional. ‘The most beautiful thing is
honesty, even if it’s really painful to look at’, she has remarked.
Self-portraiture and the nude run throughout her practice, which Emin has described as being about ‘rites of passage, of time and age, and the simple realisation that we are
always alone’. Her earliest works refer to her family, childhood and chaotic teenage years, growing up in the seaside town of Margate and leaving home at the age of fifteen.
What happened next is explored, in a manner that is neither tragic nor sentimental, in drawing, painting, film, photography, sewn appliqué, sculpture, neon and writing, as the
vicissitudes of relationships, pregnancies and abortions intersect with her commitment to the formal disciplines of art. Most recently, the artist has experienced her body as a
battleground, through illness and ageing, on which she reports with characteristic fearlessness.
In 1998, Emin created My Bed, an uncensored presentation of her most personal habitat. The double bed has become abstracted from function as it sits on the gallery floor, in
conversation with art history and a stage for life events: birth, sleep, sex, depression, illness, death. The accumulation of real objects (slippers, condoms, cigarettes, empty
bottles, underwear) on and around the unmade bed builds a portrait of the artist with bracing matter-of-factness, defying convention to exhibit what most people would keep
private. The work gained international attention as part of the Turner Prize, entering Emin into public consciousness. Another work that became a byword for her art of
disclosure was the sculpture Everyone I Have Ever Slept With 1963−1995 (1995, destroyed 2004), where the names of all those she had ever shared a bed with – friends,
lovers and family – were sewn on the inside of a tent, a crawl-space that invites the viewer to reflect on their own inventory.
Most recently, Emin’s work has been charged by the seriousness of her medical situation, since in 2020 she was diagnosed with bladder cancer. Self-portraits taken on her
camera phone in bed find the artist facing her ‘crippling’ insomnia in the small hours, and in recovery from extensive surgery. Her paintings of the nude figure have a
tempestuous energy. Emin’s graphic line, by turn delicate or vigorous, imparts a sense of urgency; with each abandoned and assertive gesture, she is flaying herself open.
Drips and obliterations point to the fluidity of the body, as it fluctuates between joy and suffering on its journey between birth and death. Explosions of colour allude to a self
that is overcome by feeling and triumphing in sheer sensuality.
Tracey Emin was born in 1963 in London. She currently lives and works between London, the South of France, and Margate, UK. Emin has exhibited extensively including
major exhibitions at Royal Academy of Arts, London (2020); Musée d’Orsay, Paris (2019); Château La Coste, Aix-en-Provence, France (2017); Leopold Museum, Vienna
(2015); Museum of Contemporary Art, Miami (2013); Museo de Arte Latinoamericano de Buenos Aires (2012); Turner Contemporary, Margate, UK (2012); Hayward
Gallery, London (2011); Kunstmuseum Bern (2009); Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh (2008); Centro de Arte Contemporáneo, Malaga, Spain (2008); Art
Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney (2003); and Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam (2002).
In 2007 Emin represented Great Britain at the 52nd Venice Biennale and her installation My Bed has been included in ‘In Focus’ displays at Tate Britain with Francis Bacon
(2015), Tate Liverpool with William Blake and also at Turner Contemporary, Margate alongside JMW Turner (2017). In 2011, Emin was appointed Professor of Drawing at
the Royal Academy of Arts, London, and in 2012 was made Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire for her contributions to the visual arts.

Tracey Emin | No Time For Love | 2020
3 Colour lithographic print on Somerset Velvet Warm White 400gsm | Signed edition of 75 | 86 x 69 cm
Under £18,000

Tracey Emin | Four Thousand Years | 2020
1 colour lithograph on Somerset Velvet Warm White 400gsm | Signed edition of 50 | 56 x 66 cm
Under £10,000

Tracey Emin | On My Knees | 2021
4 Colour Lithograph on Somerset Velvet Warm White 400gsm | Signed edition of 100 | 76 x 60 cm
Under £11,000

Tracey Emin | Curled Up | 2022
2 colour lithograph on Somerset Velvet Warm White 400gsm | Signed edition of 100 | 76 x 60 cm
Under £10,000

Tracey Emin | Hurt Heart | 2022
2 colour lithograph on Somerset Velvet Warm White 400gsm | Signed edition of 50 | 74 x 94 cm
Under £10,000

Tracey Emin | This is Forever | 2024
2 colour lithograph on Somerset Velvet Warm White 400gsm | Signed edition of 100 | 68 x 80 cm
Under £7,000

Tracey Emin with her work
‘My Bed’ (1998)