Tracey Emin
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Tracey Emin (born 3 July 1963) is an English artist of Turkish Cypriot origin, one of the group known as Britartists or YBAs (Young British Artists). 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. Emin's art takes many different forms of expression including painting, drawing, video and installation, to photography, needlework and sculpture. There has been an ongoing dispute with previous boyfriend, artist Billy Childish, particularly over the Stuckism movement.
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[edit] Life
[edit] Early life
Tracey Emin was born in Croydon, but brought up in Margate. She has a twin brother, Paul. Emin's father, 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 1987 during which time she was the administrator for his small press Hangman Books which specialized in publishing Childish's confessional poetry. 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.
[edit] Britartist
In 1993 Emin opened a shop with fellow artist Sarah Lucas, called simply The Shop in Bethnal Green. 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 writing letters to people asking them to invest £20 in her as an artist, 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, a 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 beach hut, 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.
[edit] 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.
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.
[edit] Work
[edit] Monoprints
Emin's monoprints are a well documented part of her creative output and represent a diaristic aspect and frequently depict events from the past for example, Poor Love (1999) and Abortion 1 (1995), which relate to a traumatic experience after an abortion or other personal events as seen in Fuck You Eddy (1995) and Sad Shower in New York (1995) which are both part of the Tate's collection of Emin's art. Often they incorporate text as well as image, although some bear only text and others only image. The text appears as the artist's stream of consciousness voice. Some critics have compared Emin's text-only monoprints to ransom notes. The rapid, one-off technique involved in making monoprints is perfectly suited to (apparently) immediate expression, as is Emin's scratchy and informal drawing style. Emin frequently misspells words, deliberately or due to the speed at which she did each drawing. Emin created an key series of monoprints in 1997 with the text "Something's Wrong" or "There Must Be Something Terrebly Wrong With Me" written alongside "forlorn figures surrounded by space, their outlines fragile on the page. Some are complete bodies, others only female torsos, legs splayed and with odd, spidery flows gushing from their vaginas. They are all accompanied by the legend "There's Something Wrong"."[2] Emin's monoprints are rarely displayed alone in exhibitions, they're particularly effective as collective fragments of intense emotional confrontation. Emin has made several works documenting painful moments of sadness and loneliness experienced when travelling to foreign cities for various exhibitions. Emin herself has said,
| “ | Being an artist isn't just about making nice things, or people patting you on the back; it's some kind of communication, a message. | ” |
[edit] Painting
There is a complex history of Emin's relationship with painting. She has often cited the works of Munch and Schiele as major influences. She had painted in the mid 1980s in an Expressionist style, highly influenced by her then boyfriend Billy Childish. In 1997 art critict Neal Brown, interviewing Tracey for Magma Magazine, asked "How important an Influence was Billy Childish on you?" she replied
| “ | A big influence, a major influence . . . When I first met Billy at 17 I was so nihilistic, I didn’t believe in anything or anyone . . . Billy was the first person I’d met in my life who was doing what they wanted to do . . . For a while I emulated him then was able to branch off and take my own direction. I was really in love with him as well. | ” |
In the late 1980s, Emin completed an MA at the Royal College of Art. She subsequently stopped painting and destroyed all the artworks she had ever done, during a period that she has described as her "emotional suicide" following an abortion. Photos of Emin's destroyed early paintings were part of her first White Cube solo exhibition My Major Retrospective in 1994.
In 1996, Emin locked herself in a gallery room for fourteen days with art materials, paint and empty canvases in an "attempt to reconcile herself with paintings"[4] Viewed through a series of wide-angle lenses embedded in the walls, Emin could be watched, naked, as she painted autobiographical images. The room was removed in its entirety, and now exists as a work titled Exorcism of the Last Painting I Ever Made (1996), which is an "installation including 14 paintings, 78 drawings, 5 body prints, various painted and personal items, furniture, CDs, newspapers, magazines, kitchen and food supplies.[5]
Emin's focus on painting has developed over the past few years, starting with the Purple Virgin (2004) acrylic watercolour series of purple brush strokes depicting her naked open legs, and leading to paintings such as Asleep Alone With Legs Open (2005), the Reincarnation (2005) series and Masturbating (2006) amongst others.
In May 2005, London's Evening Standard newspaper highlighted Emin's return to painting in their preview of her When I Think About Sex exhibition at White Cube. They reported that she had made four small watercolour self-portraits, focusing on her sexual regions. Other works were nude self-portrait drawings. Emin was quoted: "For this show I wanted to show that I can really draw, and I think they are really sexy drawings."[6]
Work-in-progress for her 2007 show at the Venice Biennale (see below) includes large-scale canvases of her legs and vagina.
[edit] Photography
Emin has produced photographic works throughout her career, including Monument Valley (Grand Scale) (1995-97), I've Got It All (2000) and Sometimes I Feel Beautiful (2000). Emin's most iconic are the two self portraits taken inside her famous beach hut, The Last Thing I Said To You Is Don't Leave Me Here I (2000) and The Last Thing I Said To You Is Don't Leave Me Here II (2000). The latter two photographs are a diptych although they are often exhibited and sold separately. They depict a naked Emin on her knees inside her beach hut sculpture The Last Thing I Said To You Is Don't Leave Me Here (The Hut) (1999). They are part of museum collections including Tate Modern, the Saatchi Gallery and the National Portrait Gallery (United Kingdom) and have been mass produced as postcards sold in museum shops around the world.
[edit] Neon
Emin has also worked with neon lights. One such piece is You Forgot To Kiss My Soul (2001) which consists of those words in blue neon inside a neon heart-shape. Another neon piece is made from the words Is Anal Sex Legal (1998) to complement another Is Legal Sex Anal (1998).
[edit] Fabric
Emin frequently works with fabric in the form of appliqués — material (often cut out into lettering) sewn onto other material. She collects fabric from curtains, bed sheets and linen and has done so for most of her life. She keeps such material that holds emotional significance for later use in her work. Many of her appliqués are made on hotel linens, for example. Emin's use of fabric is diverse, from sewing letters onto her grandmother's chair in There's A Lot Of Money In Chairs (1994) to the large appliqué blankets like Hellter Fucking Skelter (2001) and smaller scale works such as Always Sorry (2005) and As Always (2005).
[edit] Found objects
Emin has often made use of found objects in her work from the early use of a cigarette box found in a car crash in which her uncle died. The most well known example is My Bed, where she displayed her bed. Another instance is the removal of her beach hut from Whitstable to be displayed in a gallery. This work was titled The Last Thing I Said To You Is Don't Leave Me Here (The Hut) (1999).
[edit] Films
Emin featured with her then boyfriend, Billy Childish, in Quiet Lives (1982) (11 mins, 16mm, written and directed by Eugene Doyen), once available with Cheated and Room for Rent in A Hangman Triple Bill, also known as The Hangman Trilogy, Hangman Films. Quiet Lives is discussed in an article on Childish's films in No Focus: punk on film (Headpress, 2006): "The implicit subtext of the insane love of Ian Brady and Myra Hindley, the Moors murderers, and the public nature of the difficult relationship shared by Childish and Tracey Emin makes Quiet Lives a unique, parallel-text document."
An 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.
Top Spot (2004) was Emin's first feature film. Taking its title from a youth centre/disco in Margate (but also a sexual reference), Top Spot, draws heavily on Emin's teenage experiences of growing up in Margate, and features six teenage girls who share their stories. It is also regarded as Emin’s poem to Margate, mixing DV footage and Super 8 film into lyrical montage. The natural beauty of the sea and the sunsets is linked with Margate’s more manmade pleasures, underscored with a selection of 1970s songs that formed the soundtrack to the artist’s own adolescence. It was shot during the summertime in Margate, London, and Egypt. 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. A DVD of the film was released in 2006.
[edit] Books
- 6 Turkish Tails (1987) was published by Hangman books. Emin's editor for 6 Turkish Tails was Billy Childish and Bill Lewis.
- Strangeland (2005) was 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."[7] Emin's editor for Strangeland was the British novelist Nicholas Blincoe.
- Tracey Emin: Works 1963 - 2006 (2006) was Emin's first in depth monograph. Published by Rizzoli in October 2006 this in depth book covers her work in all media: drawing, sculpture, film, photography, and writing. The extensive text is based on a long friendship and hundreds of hours of discussion between Emin and Carl Freedman, himself a renowned gallerist and art publisher.
[edit] Sculpture
In February 2005, Emin's first public artwork, a bronze sculpture, went on display outside the Oratory, adjacent to Liverpool Cathedral. It consists of a small bird perched on a tall bronze pole, and is designed so that the bird seems to disappear when viewed from the front. It was commissioned by the BBC.[8]
[edit] Working methods
In common with many YBAs, including Damien Hirst, Emin employs assistants for fabrication purposes, for example sewing the lettering onto her appliquéd pieces. She has commented on the pointlessness of carrying out such time-consuming work in person.
Work becomes art when it is defined as such by her. A poster she photocopied and put up around her home when her cat Docket went missing became an object collected by people, but was excluded by her from her canon. Similarly 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.
[edit] 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 famous tent with appliquéd letters, Everyone I have ever slept with 1963–95 (1995) and The Last Thing I Said Is Don't Leave Me Here (The Hut) (1999), Emin's blue wooden beach hut that she bought with fellow artist Sarah Lucas and shared with her boyfriend of the time, the gallerist Carl Freedman. 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] | ” |
[edit] Venice Biennale (2007)
In August 2006, the British Council announced that they had chosen Emin to produce a show of new work for the British Pavilion at the 52nd Venice Biennale in 2007. Emin will be the second woman to produce a solo show for the UK at the Biennale, following Rachel Whiteread in 1997. In a BBC interview, Andrea Rose, the commissioner for the British Pavilion, said the exhibition would allow Emin's work to be viewed "in an international context and at a distance from the YBA generation with which she came to prominence."[9]
Emin was interviewed about the Venice Biennale in her East London studio by the BBC's Kirsty Wark; this was broadcast on BBC Four television channel in November 2006. Emin showed Wark some work-in-progress, which included large-scale canvases with paintings of Emin's legs and vagina. Emin's recent focus on painting may surprise some critics but this is in fact a natural progression that has developed over the past few years. Starting with the Purple Virgin (2004) acrylic watercolour series with their strong purple brush strokes depicting Emin's naked open legs, leading to Emin's paintings in 2005-6 such as Asleep Alone With Legs Open (2005), the Reincarnation (2005) series and Masturbating (2006) amongst others, these works herald a significant new development in Emin's artistic output.
[edit] Stuckism
Emin's relationship with the artist and musician Billy Childish led to the name of the Stuckism movement in 1999. Childish, who had mocked Emin's new affiliation to conceptualism in the early 90's, 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 the poem, "Poem for a Pissed Off Wife" published in "Big Hart and Balls" Hangman Books 1994, from which Charles Thomson, who knew them both, later coined the term Stuckism.
Emin and Childish had remained on friendly terms up until 1999, 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. | ” |
Childish left The Stuckist movement in 2001.
[edit] See also
[edit] References
- ^ "Tracey Emin with Barry Barker", University of Brighton, December 3, 2003 Retrieved April 2, 2006
- ^ http://www.tate.org.uk/magazine/issue1/something.htm Tate Magazine issue 1 article written by Melanie McGrath
- ^ http://www.tate.org.uk/servlet/ViewWork?workid=26487
- ^ http://www.saatchi-gallery.co.uk/artists/artpages/tracey_emin_exorcism1.htm
- ^ http://www.saatchi-gallery.co.uk/artists/artpages/tracey_emin_exorcism1.htm
- ^ http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/showbiz/article-18897358-details/The+bare+truth+about+Tracey/article.do
- ^ "The Times: Books |Tracey Emin" on jeanettewinterson.com Retrieved March 28, 2006
- ^ "Emin unveils 'sparrow' sculpture", BBC News, 2005-02-24. Retrieved on 2007-03-27.
- ^ http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/5285970.stm
[edit] Further reading
- Neal Brown, Tracey Emin (Tate's Modern Aritsts Series) (London: Tate, 2006) [3]
- Tracey Emin, Tracey Emin: Works 1963 - 2006 (London: Rizzoli, 2006) [4]
- Tracey Emin, Strangeland (London: Scepter, 2005) [5]
- Mandy Merck and Chris Townsend eds., The Art of Tracey Emin (London: Thames & Hudson, 2002) [6]
- Jennifer Doyle, Sex Objects: Art and the Dialectics of Desire (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2006) [7]
[edit] External links
- Tracey Emin at White Cube
- Tracey Emin at Lehmann Maupin Gallery
- Tracy Emin at the Saatchi Gallery, London
- Video interview with the artist on Tate Online
- Emin's page at the Graduate School
- Interview on The Guardian Website on her debut film Top Spot
- Tracey Emin interviewed in The Guardian about Momart Fire
- h2g2 article on Tracy Emin
- Emin's Bed Lego sculpture by the Little Artists
- Tracey Emin interviewed by Ginny Dougary (2004)
- Listen online: Tracey Emin Interviewed On BBC Radio 4
- Tracey Emin Interviewed in 1997 by Neal Brown: Billy Childish "A Major Influence"
Categories: 1963 births | Living people | Alumni of Birkbeck, University of London | Alumni of the University College for the Creative Arts | Alumni of the Royal College of Art | English artists | Literary critics of English | Conceptual artists | Installation artists | Turkish-English people | Women in art | Anglo-Cypriots | People from Croydon | People from Margate
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