Tracey Emin. Biografia

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 printing, 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.

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 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. It, too, was destroyed by the fire in Saatchi's east London warehouse, in 2004.[2]
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 weavers house which dates from 1726.

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 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,empty cigarette packets, 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.
In July 1999, at the height of Emin's Turner Prize fame, the artist created a number of monoprint drawings inspired by the public and private life of Princess Diana for a themed exhibition called Temple of Diana held at The Blue Gallery, London. Works such as They Wanted You To Be Destroyed (1999)[3] related to Princess Diana's bulimia eating disorder, while other monoprints included affectionate texts such as Love Was On Your Side and a description of Princess Diana's dress with puffy sleeves. Other drawings highlighted The things you did to help other people written next to a drawing by Emin of Princess Diana in protective clothing walking through a minefield in Angola. Another work was a delicate sketch of a rose drawn next to the phrase, It makes perfect sence to know they killed you (with Emin's trademark spelling mistakes) referring to the conspiracy theories surrounding Princess Diana's death. Emin herself described the drawings saying they "could be considered quite scrappy, fresh, kind of naive looking drawings" and "It's pretty difficult for me to do drawings not about me and about someone else. But I have did have a lot of ideas. They're quite sentimental I think and there's nothing cynical about it whatsoever."[4]
International popstars Elton John and George Michael are both collectors of Emin's work, with Michael, and his partner Kenny Goss, holding the A Tribute To Tracey Emin exhibition in September 2007 at their Dallas based museum, the Goss-Michael Foundation (formerly Goss Gallery)[5] . This was the inaugural exhibition for the gallery which displayed a variety of Emin works from a large blanket, video installations, prints, paintings and a number of neon works[6] including a special neon piece George Loves Kenny (2007) which was the centrepiece of the exhibition, developed by Emin after she wrote an article for The Independent newspaper in February 2007 with the same title.[7] Michael and Goss own 25 works by Emin.[8]
Other celebrities and musicians who support Emin's art include models Jerry Hall and Naomi Campbell, film star Orlando Bloom who bought a number of Emin's works at charity auctions[9] and pop band Temposhark, whose lead singer collects Emin's art, named their debut album The Invisible Line, inspired by passages from Emin's book Exploration of The Soul[10]. Rock legend Ronnie Wood of the Rolling Stones is a well documented friend of Emin and whose own paintings are inspired by Emin's work.[11]. In 2004, Emin presented Madonna with the UK Music Hall Of Fame award[12]. Emin was invited to Madonna's country estate Ashcombe and has been described by the singer, "Tracey is intelligent and wounded and not afraid to expose herself," she says. "She is provocative but she has something to say. I can relate to that."[13] David Bowie, a childhood inspiration of Emin's, also became friends with the artist, Bowie has described Emin as, William Blake as a woman, written by Mike Leigh[14]
Like the George Michael and Kenny Goss neon, Emin also created a unique neon work for her supermodel friend Kate Moss called Moss Kin. In 2004, it was reported that this unique piece had been discovered dumped in a skip in east London. The piece, consisting of neon tubing spelling the words Moss Kin, had been mistakenly thrown out of a basement, owned by the craftsman who made the glass. The artwork was never collected by Moss and had therefore been stored for three years in the basement of a specialist artist used by Emin in the Spitalfields area. It was accidentally dumped when the craftsman moved.[15] The term used in the work "Kin" is a recurring theme of Emin's to describe those dear to her, her loved ones. Other examples can be seen in a monoprint called MatKin dedicated to her then boyfriend artist Mat Collishaw and released as an aquatint limited edition in 1997.[16] Emin has also created a nude drawing of Kate Moss known as Kate (2000), signed and dated as 1st February 2000 in pencil by the artist. In 2006, the same image was released as a limited edition etching, but renamed as Kate Moss 2000 (2006).[17]

 

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