Tracey Emin

Tracey Emin is one of the most talked about artists working today. Using all aspects of her personal life, she turns intimate autobiography into broader emotive statements about love, sex, illness, death and everyday life. Her confessional or diaristic works – which include drawings, paintings, sculptures, neons and prints – convey a combination of frustration, pain, loss, alienation, longing, belonging, wit and empathy.

Emin represented Britain at the 52nd Venice Biennale in 2007. She was appointed professor of drawing at London’s Royal Academy in 2011, and was awarded a CBE in 2013. In 2018, Emin completed a public art commission in the heart of Sydney, comprising 67 strategically-placed handmade bronze birds, titled ‘The Distance of Your Heart’. In 2022, Emin is due to unveil an 18 tonne, nine-metre tall bronze sculpture, ‘The Mother’, in a flower meadow outside the MUNCH Museum, Norway, the site of the artist’s recent major exhibition ‘Tracey Emin / Edvard Munch – The Loneliness of the Soul’.