Tracey Emin

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Tracey Emin : biography

3 July 1963 –

In an interview with Lynn Barber published in The Observer newspaper the week before the launch of Emin’s biennale show, the artist said of her work,Andrea Rose, the British Pavilion commissioner, added to this commenting on the art Emin has produced, ‘It’s remarkably ladylike. There is no ladette work – no toilet with a poo in it – and actually it is very mature I think, quite lovely. She is much more interested in formal values than people might expect, and it shows in this exhibition. It’s been revelatory working with her. Tracey’s reputation for doing shows and hanging them is not good, but she’s been a dream to work with. What it shows is that she’s moved a long way away from the YBAs. She’s quite a lady actually!’Barber, Lynn."". guardian.co.uk, 3 June 2007.

Britartist

In 1993 Emin opened a shop with fellow artist Sarah Lucas, called The Shop at 103 Bethnal Green Road 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 November 1993 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.

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 in the 2004 Momart warehouse fire.

In 1995 Freedman curated the show Minky Manky at the South London Gallery. Emin has said,

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. It, too, was destroyed by the fire in Saatchi’s east London warehouse, in 2004."". BBC, 26 May 2004. Retrieved on 25 February 2008.

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 Steven Pippin. Emin now describes Freedman as "one of my best friends".

Emin lives in Spitalfields, East London on Fournier Street in a Georgian Huguenot silk weaver’s house which dates from 1726.