Love is What You Want, a major survey of one of Britain's most celebrated contemporary artists. Covering every period of her career, the exhibition features painting, drawing, photography, textiles, video and sculpture. Seldom-seen early works and recent large-scale installations are shown together with new outdoor sculptures created especially for the Hayward Gallery.

Since she first emerged in the early 1990s, Emin (b.1963) has made art that takes as its starting point the most harrowing and intimate details of her personal history. Sometimes confrontational or sexually provocative, her art resonates with the 'personal political' legacy of feminist art while at the same time speaking to relationships in general, as well as exploring spirituality, cultural identity, class and celebrity. Disarmingly frank and often deeply confessional, much of Emin's art - as this show makes clear - is also animated by her playful and ironic wit.

This show contains works of an explicit nature. Under 16s must be accompanied by an adult.

www.southbankcentre.co.uk

Collection Artist(s)

Glossary

  • Contemporary

    Existing or coming into being at the same period; of today or of the present. The term that designates art being made today.

  • 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.

  • 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.