Artist Deep Dive: Tracey Emin

In the first installment of this series I will be looking at the life and work of the iconic British artist Tracey Emin.

The Beginning

Born on the 3rd of July 1963 in Croydon, south London, Emin was brought up in the seaside town of Margate in Kent. Her early life is marred by tragedy and horrific incidents. Her father, a turkish-cypriot, left the family when Emin and her twin brother Paul were seven. It turned out he was living a double life and was actually married to another woman and they had three children together.

At the age of 13 Emin was raped, this shockingly traumatic event had a massive impact on her art as she took all the childhood trauma she endured and reclaimed it to make some of the greatest and most iconic art ever created. She is quoted as saying "I only survived thanks to art. It gave me faith in my own existence." In 1986 she graduated from the Maidstone College of Art with a degree in printmaking and then completed a masters in painting at the Royal College of Art in 1989.

Rise to Fame and The Domination of the Art World 1993-2010

After graduating, Emin would go through another extremely traumatic event when she had two abortions which would go on to heavily influence her work. In 1993 Emin alongside girlfriend and fellow artist Sarah Lucas opened The Shop at 103 Bethnal Green, London.

Sarah Lucas (left) and Tracey Emin (right) in the doorway of The Shop in 1993.

Lucas and Emin were actually looking for a studio space to work on their projects, Sarah Lucas had just sold some work to renowned art collector and founder of the Saatchi gallery, Charles Saatchi. The pair were looking at the east end of london, more specifically Brick Lane where they had a realisation which would be the start of an incredible and culturally significant timeline of events. Lots of the shops were boarded up back then and the girls looked at each other and decided they should have a shop instead of a studio. they painted the walls a magnolia colour, a protest to the sterile white walls of art galleries in the 90s. In anticipation for the official opening they went to brick lane market in search of supplies and made as much stuff as they could in three days. they filled the shop with various items including ribbons with labels on them saying "help me" and "so boring" that you could flash at someone when you got stuck talking to someone you didn't want to be talking to. The main item available were t-shirts with slogans on them drawn on by Emin and Lucas.

T-shirts sold at The Shop. Emin drew the one on the left and Lucas drew the one on the right.

The shop closed six months later as Emin and Lucas were offered and art project in Geneva which they agreed to do. The closing party was a pretty mental affair with sponsorship from Zeiss beer, beer mixed with champagne, and even Tracey Emin's estranged father turning up. They left the shop open all night in the hopes people would steal all the stock which most of it was, but the money was all safe so it all went to plan.

Moving on to the year 1995, a pivotal year in the career of Tracey Emin. This year saw the creation of the piece that made her rise to fame and one of the greatest of the generation of YBAs (young British artists). This piece was of course the iconic Everyone That I Have Ever Slept With (1963-1995). This was exactly what it sounds like, it was a tent with the names of everyone Emin had ever slept with in her life at that point in time.

The exterior (above) and interior (below) of the tent.

Now if you read into the title too literally you would think that this was a list of people Emin had sex with. Reading the title properly you would realise that it does not mean that, in reality it is a list of people that Emin has shared a bed with including her twin brother Paul, Grandmother, two aborted fetuses and childhood teddy bear. The tent resembles the shape of the Shell Grotto in Margate which Emin said fascinated her as a kid. The work drew the interest of art collector and businessman Charles Saatchi but Emin refused to sell to him due to Saatchi's advertising work for the administration of Margaret Thatcher. Emin sold it for £12,000 but Saatchi bought it on the secondary market from dealer Eric Franck for £40,000. The tent was sadly destroyed in a fire at the East London Momart warehouse in 2004.

In 1998, Emin produced another notable piece which would come to be her most famous. My Bed. This sculpture was exhibited at the Tate Britain for the 1999 Turner prize, which she ended up losing to Steve McQueen.

My Bed by Tracey Emin 1999

Close up of My Bed

The sculpture is Emin's actual bed after the artist spent four days in bed following a depressive period in her life after going through a messy break up and other personal issues and traumas. During this period Emin didn't eat well, smoked countless cigarettes and drank heavily. When she finally felt a bit better to get out of bed she realised that in this depressive episode she had just made her finest work. My Bed is the exact scene from that depressive episode with bottles of alcohol, cigarettes, crumpled up tissues, stained clothing and a bed which is unmade and in need of a wash. We have all had days, weeks and even months where we have felt like this, where our depression pits start to engulf us just as the emotions do. Emin with her incredible artistry and creative thinking managed to turn something thought of as ugly and something to be hidden into a beautiful piece of art and something which we shouldn't be ashamed of as it is a normal human emotion that we all feel at some point in our lives. Emin was brave enough to be as vulnerable as someone can be and this propelled her to be a household name and establish herself as one of the greatest artists of the YBA generation. My Bed was sold at a Christie's auction in 2014 for £2,546,500, which is a record for Emin at auction and was bought by White Cube gallery founder Jay Jopling. This is very poetic as Emin's first solo exhibition was actually at the White Cube gallery.

As the new millenium came around and the 21st century began, Emin held her biggest solo exhibition at Modern Art Oxford. This exhibition ran from November 2002 until January 2003 and featured embroidered blankets, drawings and the main piece was an installation titled Knowing My Enemy (2002) made out of broken pier wood and with a fisherman shack on top of it, representative of Emin's upbringing in the seaside town of Margate.

Knowing My Enemy (2002)

The year 2007 was a very significant year for Tracey Emin. This year she was chosen for one of, if not the most prestigious cultural festivals in the world the Venice Biennale which showcases art and architecture from all around the world. It was established in 1895 and attracts up to 600,000 visitors in its run from May to November. Emin was selected to represent the British pavilion in 2007 and became the second woman to be chosen to exhibit at the Venice Biennale by the British Council. The first woman was Rachel Whitehead a decade before in 1997. Emin titled her exhibition Borrowed Light, it included an installation, paintings, drawings and neon sign installations with different phases. Pictures from the exhibition are below.

Back and front of the pamphlet for the showing folded out

In 2007 Emin was also appointed as a Royal Academician, making her a member of the Royal Academy of Arts London and able to curtate exhibitions and show work at the annual summer exhibition at the academy. In becoming a Royal Academician she joined a highly esteemed collection of artists including David Hockney, Augustus John and architect Zara Hadid. The following year in 2008 the first major retrospective of Emin's work was held at the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art in Edinburgh attracting a gallery record 40,000 visitors.

The exhibition catalogue for the 20 years retrospective show in Edinburgh (2008)

Later Career and What is Happening Now

2010-2025

The 2010s were much calmer than the 90s for Emin after all the turmoil and trauma in her life she had taken over the the art world and become one of the most important and greatest artists in Britain to ever live. In 2012 Emin was one of 12 artists selected to produce a poster for the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic games. She also was chosen to carry the olympic torch through her hometown of Margate.

Emin's Olympic poster (2012).

In 2013, Emin was given a CBE in the New Years Honours for her services to the arts. She was also named one of the 100 most powerful women in the UK in February 2013 by Woman's Hour on BBC Radio 4. During the 2010s as Emin entered her 50s she continued to exhibit all over the world in places like Brazil, Hong Kong and New York.

In 2018 to celebrate the 150th anniversary of St Pancras International train station and the 250th anniversary of the Royal Academy of Arts, Emin produced a neon sign in the station which hung 20 meters across the station roof below the iconic St Pancras clock. The neon sign was hand drawn and was Emin's largest text piece she has created.

In 2021 Emin held and curated a joint exhibition with the incredible artist of The Scream (1893) fame, Edvard Munch. Born 100 years apart but a monumental influence on Emin, she was quoted as saying “I’ve been in love with this man since I was eighteen”.This was also the first significant exhibition post-pandemic for Emin. The exhibition featured 25 of Emin's works including her signature neon signs, paintings and sculptures and 18 oil and watercolour paintings from his extensive collection and archives in Oslo, Norway.

The Loneliness of the Soul (2021). Joint exhibition for Tracey Emin and Edvard Munch.

In 2022 Emin produced one of her most impressive works yet, a nine metre tall bronze sculpture titled Mother. This piece was made by carefully crafting 142 pieces of bronze into five sections taking around 8,000 hours of work to complete. The piece was made to be installed at Inger Munch's Pier just south of the Munch Museum in Oslo Norway. Emin had this to say about the sculpture. 'The Mother sits like a Sphinx. Waiting for the tide. Looking out to sea, protecting the home of Munch. Her legs open towards the Fjord. She is welcoming all of nature. She is the companion of the Ghost of Munch’.

Mother (2022)

On the 5th of July 2020 Emin was diagnosed with Bladder cancer. Thankfully it was found in time and she underwent an emergency operation on the 18th of July 2020. This life saving operation removed her bladder and several organs around the bladder, a full hysterectomy. This left Emin in remission but with a stoma. For which she will have to wear a urostomy bag for the rest of her life. In 2023, Emin had further health issues when her small intestine in her own words "nearly exploded" whilst travelling from Australia to Thailand. She spent a few days in a Bangkok hospital, after that Emin was placed on a special diet and eventually flew back to the UK when she was well enough. Emin said in a 2024 interview with The Independent “Cancer allowed me to find the space to give up drink, and find the best in my self and in my life. I am loving it.” Emin is now cancer free.

Happier news followed in 2024 however, when Tracey Emin became Dame Tracey Emin as she was given a damehood in the 2024 King’s Birthday Honours. On accepting the Damehood Emin remarked ‘it gives me a louder voice to do the things that I think are important’. She also got the wonderful news that she was all clear from cancer in 2024.

In the midst of receiving a damehood and getting the all clear from cancer Emin held her first major exhibition since her cancer diagnoses at the Xavier Hufkens gallery in Brussels. This exhibition featured paintings all done post cancer diagnoses in the Margate studio she opened in 2023, TKE studios. TKE studios are affordable studios that artists can work at and become a member of. Emin also started the Tracey Emin Artist Residency (TEAR) programme which is a free art school where you can learn from Emin who sets projects for the artists to complete and is completely studio based.

Emin completing a painting in her Margate studio (2024).

For the exhibition in Xavier Hufkens Emin wanted to explore the complexity of human emotions and emotions are laid completely bare in these works. Emin uses bold colour and calculated, expressive strokes. See works from this exhibition below.

There's nothing Left of her (2023).

I watched Myself die and come alive (2023).

I Sailed Away From You, (2024).

In closing, Tracey Emin is, in my opinion, the most important british artist that has ever lived. She has had a tragically traumatic life but through pure determination and by sticking to who she is as a person she completely took over the art world. A working class girl from Kent made the establishment sit up and take notice weather they liked it or not. Her whole career people have been critical of her, My Bed (1998) was described as filthy, disgusting and not really art. That last criticism is what Emin has had to face all of her career. People think art must be a painting like Picasso or a beautiful landscape like Turner. Art is everywhere and art is anything you want it to be. Emin's bed was not just an unmade bed it was a real showcasing of how depression affects us. Intimate and vulnerable. Tracey Emin is a immensely talented painter she could paint like Picasso or Turner anytime she felt like it, but she is doing something more profound and more important. Using all her trauma and being her most vulnerable for all to see, this may not be what some critics deem art but it is the finest art and it has made Dame Tracey Emin an icon and a multi millionaire.

Emin has an exhibition in London starting on the 26th of February 2026 and running until the 31st of August 2026 at the Tate Modern. You can read more about it here.