Artist Research - Tracy Emin

Another artist who I have looked at for their similarity in work is Tracey Emin who is known for two pieces in particular; “Everyone I have Ever Slept With 1963-1995” (1995) where you can see a blue tent that has had numerous names added to it by needlework and the piece “My Bed” (1998) where Emin “shows us her own bed, in all its embarrassing glory. Empty booze bottles, fag butts, stained sheets, worn panties: the bloody aftermath of a nervous breakdown. By presenting her bed as art, Tracey Emin shares her most personal space, revealing she’s as insecure and imperfect as the rest of the world. Her style of work ranges from video, photography and installation to painting and drawings, and even sculpture and needlework. Through her work we can see her successes and failures, hopes and humiliations in a candid viewpoint that, at times, can come across as humorous and tragic. As well as this, Emin’s work also has underlying themes such as “an immediacy and often sexually provocative attitude that firmly locates her oeuvre within the tradition of feminist discourse. By re-appropriating conventional handicraft techniques – or ‘women’s work’ – for radical intentions, Emin’s work resonates with the feminist tenets of the ‘personal as political’”. The majority of her work isn’t completely relevant style wise to my own work, but her series of bird monoprints interest me because of the simplicity that goes into them and the fact that you can still get detail through from a quick process piece of art. These pieces of Emin’s work remind me of some of my quick and simple bird pen sketches that are products of some initial drawings based from primary and secondary sources. What made me think of Tracey Emin as a reference towards my own art was seeing some of her work exhibited at the TATE Liverpool, and because of this I was able to see some of her lesser known pieces, such as the bird paintings, rather than just the more acclaimed works.

Although not all of Emin's work is relevant to my own style, I am still inspired by her bird drawings because of the quick and sketchy style that you gain from them being monoprints as well as it having an underlying theme of nature, such as my

own work.