Tracey Emin
Tracey Emin (born 3 July, 1963) is an English artist of Turkish Cypriot origin, one of the so-called Young British Artists (YBAs), also known as Britartists. She has succeeded in equalling, if not surpassing, Damien Hirst among the YBAs in terms of notoriety among the general public. A drunken outburst on a Channel 4 TV discussion, and My Bed — an installation in the 1999 Turner Prize exhibition, consisting of her own unmade dirty bed with used condoms and blood-stained underwear — both caused a media furore.
Early life
Tracey Emin was born in Croydon, but brought up in Margate. She has a twin brother, Paul. Emin's father, who was an ethnic Turkish Cypriot was married to a woman other than her mother and divided his time between his two families. He owned the Hotel International in Margate, and, when the business failed, Emin's family suffered a severe decline in their standard of living, circumstances which have featured in a number of works. Around the age of 13 she was raped or "broken in" as she describes the then-current term.
She studied fashion at Medway College of Design (1980–1982), where she met expelled student Billy Childish and was associated with The Medway Poets. Emin and Childish were a couple till 1986, Emin selling his poetry books for his small press Hangman books. In 1984 she studied printing at Maidstone Art College, which she has described as one of the best experiences of her life. In 1995 she was interviewed in the Minky Manky show catalogue by Carl Freedman, who asked her, "Which person do you think has had the greatest influence on your life?" She replied,
Uhmm... It's not a person really. It was more a time, going to Maidstone College of Art, hanging around with Billy Childish, living by the River Medway.
In 1987 she moved to London to study at the Royal College of Art, where she obtained an MA in painting, though she has described this time as a very negative experience. Her influences included Edvard Munch and Egon Schiele; later she destroyed all her paintings from this early period, and for a time studied philosophy at Birkbeck, University of London.
Britartist
In 1993 Emin opened a shop called simply The Shop in Bethnal Green with fellow artist Sarah Lucas. This sold works by the two of them, including T-shirts and ash trays with Damien Hirst's picture stuck to the bottom. Lucas paid Emin a wage to mind the shop and Emin also made extra money by agreeing to write letters to people, one being Jay Jopling, who became her dealer. During this period Emin was also working with the gallerist Joshua Compston.
In 1994 she had her first solo show at the White Cube gallery, the leading contemporary art gallery in London. It was called My Major Retrospective, and was what is now seen as typically autobiographical in her work, consisting of personal photographs, and photos of her (destroyed) early paintings, as well as items which most artists would not consider showing in public, such as a packet of cigarettes her uncle was holding when he was decapitated in a car crash. This willingness to show details of what would generally be thought of as her private life has become one of Emin's trademarks.
In the mid-1990s she had a relationship with Carl Freedman, who had been an early friend of, and collaborator with, Damien Hirst and who had co-curated seminal Britart shows, such as Modern Medicine and Gambler. In 1994 they toured the US together, driving in a Cadillac from San Francisco to New York, and making stops en route where she gave readings from her autobiographical book Exploration of the Soul to finance the trip. En route they "belly surfed" in San Diego and watched bears in Big Sur.
The couple also spent time by the sea in Whitstable together, using the beachut, which she uprooted and turned into art in 1999 with the title The Last Thing I Said to You is Don't Leave Me Here, and which was destroyed (along with her "tent") in the 2004 Momart warehouse fire.
In 1995 Freedman curated the show Minky Manky at the South London Gallery. Emin has said:
- "At that time Sarah (Lucas) was quite famous, but I wasn’t at all. Carl said to me that I should make some big work as he thought the small-scale stuff I was doing at the time wouldn’t stand up well. I was furious. Making that work was my way at getting back at him."[1]
The result was Emin's famous "tent" Everyone I have Ever Slept With 1963–1995, which was first exhibited in the show. It was a blue tent, appliquéd with the names of everyone she has slept with. These included sexual partners, plus relatives she slept with as a child, her twin brother, and her two aborted children. Although often talked about as a shameless exhibition of her sexual conquests, it was rather a piece about intimacy in a more general sense, although the title invites misinterpretation. The needlework which is integral to this work was used by Emin in a number of her other pieces. This piece was later bought by Charles Saatchi and included in the successful 1997 Sensation exhibition at the Royal Academy of London; it then toured to Berlin and New York.
Freedman's interview with her appears in the catalogue. Other featured artists were Sarah Lucas, Gary Hume, Damien Hirst, Mat Collishaw, Gilbert & George, Critical Décor and Stephen Pippin. Emin now describes Freedman as "one of my best friends". He is now her tenant, living in a weaver's cottage at the back of her 450-year-old Huguenot house in Spitalfields, East London.
Fame
Although these early events caused Emin to be well known in art circles, she was largely unknown by the public until she appeared on a Channel 4 television programme in 1997. It was an ostensibly serious debate show about that year's Turner Prize, and Emin appeared completely drunk (she has said this was caused by painkillers she was taking for a broken finger), swearing, insulting the other panel members and saying that she wanted to go home to her mum (she then left).
Two years later, in 1999, Emin was shortlisted for the Turner Prize herself and exhibited My Bed [1] at the Tate Gallery. There was considerable media furore about this, particularly as the sheets of the bed were stained yellow, and the floor surrounding it had items from her room such as condoms, a pair of knickers with period stains and other detritus including a pair of slippers. The bed was presented as it had been when she had stayed in it for several days feeling suicidal because of relationship difficulties.
![[1]](http://image.guardian.co.uk/sys-images/Guardian/Pix/gallery/2001/05/29/bed.jpg){kind=link}
One lady came to the exhibition with cleaning materials and had to be stopped from tidying it up. Two performance artists, Yuan Chai and Jian Jun Xi, jumped onto the bed with bare torsos in order to "improve" the work, which they thought had not gone far enough.
Other works
Another autobiographical work is the film CV Cunt Vernacular (1997), in which Emin narrates her story from childhood in Margate, through her student years, abortions and destruction of her early work. A later film, Top Spot (2004), named after a youth centre in Margate (but also a sexual reference), draws heavily on her teenage experiences. It was given an 18 certificate by the British Board of Film Censors owing to the instructive nature of a scene in which a teenage girl commits suicide. Emin responded by withdrawing the film from general distribution, though it has since been broadcast by the BBC. It was not a critical or commercial success.
Emin has also worked with neon lights. One such piece is You Forgot To Kiss My Soul which consists of those words in neon inside a neon heart-shape. One neon piece is made from the words "Is Anal Sex Legal" to complement another "Is Legal Sex Anal".
Strangeland
Strangeland is Emin's long-awaited memoir. It is divided into three sections, "Motherland", "Fatherland" and "Traceyland". It is written in the first person and conveys an unvarnished look at her life from childhood. Jeanette Winterson wrote, "Her latest writings are painfully honest, and certainly some of it should have been edited out by someone who loves her."[2]
School tapestry
In 2002, Emin was commissioned to collaborate with children on an artwork in a primary school in North London. Pupils made the piece with her in Emin's style of sewing cut out letters onto a large piece of material. In 2004, the school enquired if Emin would sign the work so that the school could sell it as an original to raise funds. Emin refused and demanded the return of the tapestry, saying that it was not a piece of her art.
Momart fire
On 24 May, 2004, a fire in a Momart storage warehouse in East London destroyed many works from the Saatchi collection, including Emin's Everyone I have ever slept with 1963–95, The Last Thing I Said Is Don't Leave Me Here and The Hut. Emin spoke out angrily against the general public lack of sympathy, and even amusement, at the loss of the artworks in the fire. However, she also put the loss in perspective, commenting: "I'm also upset about those people whose wedding got bombed last week [in Iraq], and people being dug out from under 400ft of mud in the Dominican Republic." [2]
Stuckism
Emin's relationship with the artist and musician Billy Childish led to the name of the Stuckism movement in 1999. Childish, who is devoted to painting, was told by Emin, "Your paintings are stuck, you are stuck! – Stuck! Stuck! Stuck!" (that is, stuck in the past for not accepting the YBA approach to art). He recorded the incident in a poem, "Poem for a Pissed Off Wife", in 1994, from which Charles Thomson, who knew them both, coined the term Stuckism.
Emin and Childish had remained on friendly terms up until this time, but the activities of the Stuckist group offended her and caused a lasting rift with Childish. In a 2003 interview, she was asked about the Stuckists:
- "I don't like it at all," she spat. "I don't really want to talk about it. If your wife was stalked and hounded through the media by someone she'd had a relationship with when she was 18, would you like it? That's what happened to me. I don't find it funny, I find it a bit sick, and I find it very cruel, and I just wish people would get on with their own lives and let me get on with mine."[3]
References
- ^ "Tracey Emin with Barry Barker", University of Brighton, December 3, 2003 Retrieved April 2, 2006
- ^ "The Times: Books |Tracey Emin" on jeanettewinterson.com Retrieved March 28, 2006
External links
- Tracey Emin at White Cube
- Tracey Emin at Lehmann Maupin Gallery
- Tracey Emin at the Saatchi Gallery
- Video interview with the artist on Tate Online
- h2g2 article on Tracy Emin
- Emin's page at the Graduate School
- Fan site
- Emin's Bed Lego sculpture by the Little Artists
- Tracey Emin's debut film Top Spot at The Salt Gallery in Cornwall