Tracy Emin

Description	Artist
Dates	1963-Present
Lived/Worked	London

Best known for...

Her piece "The Bed" which was part of the 1999 Turner prize exhibition and Everyone I've ever slept with.(pictured)

Why is she important?

She is unlike other artists because of her autobiographical style of work, it is all about exposing the kind of things about herself that most people would be too ashamed to reveal.
Her confessional subjects include abortions, rape, self-neglect and promiscuity, sometimes expressed with the help of gloriously old-fashioned looking, hand-sewn applique letters.

Historical context

She was inspired by the works of Edvard Munch and Egon Schiele and was part of the Brit Art movement alongside such artists as Damien Hirst. Emin was the inspiration for a latter day art movement called Stuckism, which is devoted to advancing the cause of painting as the most vital means of addressing contemporary issues. The movement was founded by her ex-boyfriend Billy Childish, to whom she had once said: "Your paintings are stuck, you are stuck! Stuck! Stuck! Stuck!". She came to wider public attention during a live Channel 4 Turner Prize debate in 1997. A very inebriated Emin mumbled incoherently that "no real people" would be watching and that she wanted to go be with her mum and friends.

How to see her work

Emin's first move into the public eye was opening a shop in London's Bethnal Green called The Shop, with fellow artist Sarah Lucas. Emin's stock included letters she'd written and ashtrays with pictures of Damien Hurst's face stuck to the bottom of them.White Cube curator Jay Jopling spotted her in 1994 and the big time called. In 1999 "Mad Tracey from Margate" (her words) was shortlisted for the Turner Prize for an installation entitled My Bed, a testimony to her self-neglect and over-indulgence. She didn't win, but Charles Saatchi paid £150,000 for it and is currently being exhibited at the Saatchi art gallery

Tracy Emin on the web

http://www.hatii.arts.gla.ac.uk/MultimediaStudentProjects/00-01/9704524l/MM%20Project/Html/badly1.htm - (A brief summary of Tracy Emins infamous 1997 appearance on TV)