Tracey Emin turns her own life into the raw material of some of the most talked-about British art. Working across installation, neon, painting, embroidery and an extensive print practice, she rose to prominence among the Young British Artists in the 1990s, alongside Damien Hirst.
Her confessional works include an appliqued tent, Everyone I Have Ever Slept With 1963–1995, and her own unmade bed installation, My Bed. Printmaking has stayed close to her practice from the very beginning, offering the same directness and risk of exposure as her more notorious installations. Now a Royal Academician and Dame, Emin has moved from provocateur to one of Britain’s most senior living artists.
Her confessional works include an appliqued tent, Everyone I Have Ever Slept With 1963–1995, and her own unmade bed installation, My Bed. Printmaking has stayed close to her practice from the very beginning, offering the same directness and risk of exposure as her more notorious installations. Now a Royal Academician and Dame, Emin has moved from provocateur to one of Britain’s most senior living artists.
Summary
Tracey Emin turns her own life into the raw material of some of the most talked-about British art. Working across installation, neon, painting, embroidery and an extensive print practice, she rose to prominence among the Young British Artists in the 1990s, alongside Damien Hirst.
Her confessional works include an appliqued tent, Everyone I Have Ever Slept With 1963–1995, and her own unmade bed installation, My Bed. Printmaking has stayed close to her practice from the very beginning, offering the same directness and risk of exposure as her more notorious installations. Now a Royal Academician and Dame, Emin has moved from provocateur to one of Britain’s most senior living artists.
Her confessional works include an appliqued tent, Everyone I Have Ever Slept With 1963–1995, and her own unmade bed installation, My Bed. Printmaking has stayed close to her practice from the very beginning, offering the same directness and risk of exposure as her more notorious installations. Now a Royal Academician and Dame, Emin has moved from provocateur to one of Britain’s most senior living artists.
Artworks by Tracey Emin
About Tracey Emin
Biography
About Tracey Emin
Tracey Emin was born in London in 1963 and grew up in Margate, a town that recurs throughout her work. She studied at Medway College of Design before training in painting at the Royal College of Art, London.
Confession, appliqué and My Bed
Emin’s breakthrough works turned her intensely private experiences into public installation. Everyone I Have Ever Slept With 1963–1995, involving a small tent appliquéd inside with the names of everyone she had shared a bed with, sexually or otherwise, was shown at Charles Saatchi’s Sensation exhibition in 1997. My Bed, was an installation of her actual bed, left surrounded by empty bottles, cigarettes and stained sheets from a period of severe depression. It was shortlisted for the Turner Prize in 1999 and later sold at auction for more than £2M. In both works and the appliquéd blankets she made throughout the 1990s, Emin used her own handwriting as a recurring signature.
A printmaker from the start
Printmaking has run through Emin’s career: monoprints, woodcuts, etchings and screenprints sit alongside her installations as a more private, immediate counterpart to them. Her monoprint technique (where she places paper over an inked surface, draws on the paper and then transfers the ink through pressure) produces work she has described as alchemic, since the result cannot be fully known until the paper is lifted.
Recurring subjects include birds, nudes and short handwritten phrases, often drawn from the same confessions that appear in her installations. Emin represented Great Britain at the 2007 Venice Biennale, was elected a Royal Academician that same year, and then made a Dame in 2024. She now runs her own art school in Margate.
Biography
About Tracey Emin
Tracey Emin was born in London in 1963 and grew up in Margate, a town that recurs throughout her work. She studied at Medway College of Design before training in painting at the Royal College of Art, London.
Confession, appliqué and My Bed
Emin’s breakthrough works turned her intensely private experiences into public installation. Everyone I Have Ever Slept With 1963–1995, involving a small tent appliquéd inside with the names of everyone she had shared a bed with, sexually or otherwise, was shown at Charles Saatchi’s Sensation exhibition in 1997. My Bed, was an installation of her actual bed, left surrounded by empty bottles, cigarettes and stained sheets from a period of severe depression. It was shortlisted for the Turner Prize in 1999 and later sold at auction for more than £2M. In both works and the appliquéd blankets she made throughout the 1990s, Emin used her own handwriting as a recurring signature.
A printmaker from the start
Printmaking has run through Emin’s career: monoprints, woodcuts, etchings and screenprints sit alongside her installations as a more private, immediate counterpart to them. Her monoprint technique (where she places paper over an inked surface, draws on the paper and then transfers the ink through pressure) produces work she has described as alchemic, since the result cannot be fully known until the paper is lifted.
Recurring subjects include birds, nudes and short handwritten phrases, often drawn from the same confessions that appear in her installations. Emin represented Great Britain at the 2007 Venice Biennale, was elected a Royal Academician that same year, and then made a Dame in 2024. She now runs her own art school in Margate.
