Tracey Emin is an English contemporary artist who was born in 1963. She works across a variety of mediums such as needlework, painting, sculptures, video, photography, drawing and installation. The content of Emin’s work often reflects elements of the expressive and confessional and her installations are bold and profound, as she is unafraid to depict aspects of her own life to form her compositions. At the Royal Academy of Arts, Emin offers advice and talks to developing artists in her position as Professor of Drawing. She is sometimes considered in relation to the Stuckism group, which was founded by her previous partner, Billy Childish, after suggesting that Emin was stuck in the past.
Tracey Emin has received attention in the honesty of her artwork, such as the much-publicised ‘Everyone I Have Ever Slept With’. This installation was a small blue tent displayed at a Charles Saatchi exhibition at the Royal Academy in London, and the tent exhibited all the names of the people she had ever shared a bed with. Not long after winning a Turner Prize, Emin created a readymade installation called ‘My Bed’. It displayed her own bed, beside which she had spent weeks drinking, smoking, sleeping and having sexual intercourse. It portrayed Emin’s brave style and her honesty that did appealed and does still to her viewers.
