Dame Tracey Emin RA

Born in Croydon in 1963 and brought up in Margate, Emin was part of the group known as the YBAs (Young British Artists) and is one of the most acclaimed and successful British contemporary artists. Emin received her Damehood in 2024.

In 1997, her work ‘Everyone I Have Ever Slept With 1963–1995’, a tent appliquéd with names, was shown at Charles Saatchi’s ‘Sensation’ exhibition held at the Royal Academy in London. The same year, she gained considerable media exposure and became a household name when she appeared drunk and swearing on a live Channel 4 TV discussion. In 1999, she was shortlisted for the Turner Prize and exhibited the infamous ‘My Bed’; an installation, consisting of her own unmade, dirty bed with used condoms and blood-stained underwear.Emin’s art is often seen as highly confessional and takes many different forms of expression including needlework and sculpture, drawing, mono printing, video, installation, photography and painting. A willingness to show details of what would generally be thought of as her private life has become one of Emin’s trademarks.

Emin herself described the drawings saying they “could be considered quite scrappy, fresh, kind of naive looking drawings” and “it’s pretty difficult for me to do drawings not about me and about someone else. They’re quite sentimental I think and there’s nothing cynical about it whatsoever.”In 2007, Emin was chosen to join the Royal Academy of Arts in London as a Royal Academician. She represented Britain at the 2007 Venice Biennale. Tracey opened the Turner Contemporary art gallery in Margate in April 2011. She has been a major supporter of the project from its inception and it has been suggested she will exhibit there in the future. In May 2011, Emin’s largest major solo exhibition in a public space was held at London’s Hayward Gallery, London titled ‘Love Is What You Want’. The exhibition consisted of work from all aspects of Emin’s art practice.

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