Tracey Emin was born in 1963 in Croydon, London and grew up in the seaside town of Margate. She was shortlisted for the Turner Prize in 1999 and represented Britain at the Venice Biennale in 2007. In 2011 she was made the Royal Academy's Professor of Drawing, one of the first two female professors in the history of the institution.

Emin gained notoriety as one of the Young British Artists (YBAs) in the early 1990s and has since become one of the most famous female artists to emerge from the UK. In her installation, My Bed (1998), she laid her private life bare for public view. This raw presentation of the most intimate corner of her life has become the hallmark of Emin’s practice, which encompasses drawing, painting, sculpture, video and installations, all with an intensely personal touch that focuses on the artist’s body, autobiography and confession. She states, ‘I am interested in life; art for me should be an experience.’

Exploration of the Soul (1994) is a handmade book chronicling the first 13 years of Emin’s life from conception to the loss of her virginity; the artist travelled across America reading from the book while sitting in a chair owned by her grandmother. Something’s Wrong (2002) is a self-portrait in cloth and embroidery which shows the artist gathering a mass of appliquéd coins between her legs; perhaps an allusion to the wealth generated from the spilling of secrets.

 

Glossary

  • Drawing

    The depiction of shapes and forms on a flat surface chiefly by means of lines although colour and shading may also be included. Materials most commonly used are pencil, ink, crayon, charcoal, chalk and pastel, although other materials, including paint, can be used in combination.

  • Installation

    An artwork comprised of many and various elements of miscellaneous materials (see mixed media), light and sound, which is conceived for and occupies an entire space, gallery or site. The viewer can often enter or walk around the installation. Installations may only exist as long as they are installed, but can be re-created in different sites. Installation art emerged in the 1960s out of Environmental Art (works of art which are three-dimensional environments), but it was not until the 1970s that the term came into common use and not until the late 1980s that artists started to specialise in this kind of work, creating a genre of ‘Installation Art’. The term can also be applied to the arrangement of selected art works in an exhibition.

  • Painting

    Work of art made with paint on a surface. Often the surface, also called a support, is a tightly stretched piece of canvas, paper or a wooden panel. Painting involves a wide range of techniques and materials, along with the artist's intellectual concerns effecting the content of a work.

  • Sculpture

    A three-dimensional work of art. Such works may be carved, modelled, constructed, or cast. Sculptures can also be described as assemblage, in the round, relief, and made in a huge variety of media. Contemporary practice also includes live elements, as in Gilbert & George 'Living Sculpture' as well as broadcast work, radio or sound sculpture.

  • Video

    Images recorded on videotape or on optical disc to be viewed on television screens, or projected onto screens. The medium through which these images are recorded and displayed.

See in

  • Art Project

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