TRACEY EMIN was born in London in 1963 but brought up in Margate, Kent. Emin completed an MA in painting at the Royal College of Art and her interest in the expressionist works of Munch and Schiele informed the paintings she produced at that time. She subsequently destroyed these works when she suffered what she has described as her 'emotional suicide' following an abortion.

Some years later, Emin returned to making art, this time using her personal experience to make highly confessional works. Her first solo exhibition, at White Cube in 1993, was entitled ‘My Major Retrospective’ and included a display of personal memorabilia and photographs of all her destroyed paintings in a disarmingly frank exploration of her own life. Emin’s art is one of disclosure, using her life events in works ranging from story telling, drawing, filmmaking, installation, painting, neon, photography, appliquéd blankets and sculpture. Emin exposes herself, her hopes, humiliations, failures and successes in an incredibly direct manner. Often tragic and frequently humorous, it is as if by telling her story and weaving it into the fiction of her art she somehow transforms it.

Emin has exhibited internationally including solo and group exhibitions in Holland, Germany, Japan, Australia and America. In 1999 she was short listed for the Turner Prize at the Tate Gallery (London). She has had solo shows at White Cube (London) in 2001 and 2005, Stedelijk Museum (Amsterdam), Haus der Kunst (Munich) and Modern Art Oxford in 2002. Art Gallery of New South Wales (Australia) 2003. Galleria Lorcan O’Neill (Rome) in 2004 and Lehmann Maupin (New York) 2002 and 2005.

Photographer - Jake Gavin