Tracey Emin

A new comprehensive monograph on the work of an enduring icon of contemporary art. Compiled in close collaboration with the artist and unprecedented in its scope, this definitive book collects ten years of Tracey Emin’s drawings, paintings, sculptures, appliqués and embroideries, neons, video stills, and installations. A multimedia artist whose intensely personal work blurs the boundaries between art and life, Emin remains one of the most highly publicized contemporary British artists and continues to stir as much controversy as she has acclaim. Moving chronologically through a prolific decade of work—from major public installations to recent reflective paintings and sculptures—this book shows a coherent vision that defies the idiosyncrasies of Emin’s evolution as an artist. The same mixture of anger, hope, curiosity, and vulnerability that informs her delicate drawings and handwritten neon works can be felt in the darker tones of recent monoprints and the weight of later bronze pieces. Written by Jonathan Jones, whose text places Emin’s work in a broad art-historical context and sees this recent decade of her artwork as an entry point to examining her full career, this is a beautiful monograph on one of the world’s most influential living artists.

Tracey Emin is one of Great Britain's best-known and most controversial artists. This catalogue accompanies the first major survey exhibition of Tracey Emin's work at the Hayward Gallery in London since her rise to prominence in the 1990s. Bringing together suites of works from across the artist's career emphasising the diversity of her dynamic practice, the exhibition spotlights her achievements in a wide variety of media, including sculpture, drawing, painting, text-based works, photographs, video and performance. The book is conceived and produced in close collaboration with the artist and designed by Graphic Thought Facility, London. The exhibition shows at Hayward Gallery, London, 18 May - 29 August 2011

Tracey Emin first came to public attention in the early 1990s and has gone on to achieve a level of visibility unparalleled for an artist in recent times. Her use of intensely personal, everyday materials gives her work an intimate quality, combining avant-garde ideas with traditions of craft. Employing a variety of media that have included installation, film and video, prints and drawings, neon, fabric and artists' books, Emin has built up a formidable body of work whilst maintaining a distinctive artistic vision that is all her own.

"The most highly publicized of the infamous Young British Artists, Emin has stirred as much controversy as she has acclaim, being both highly personal and extremely original in her art. Emin's work is engaging, titillating, disturbing, and startlingly confessional. One of her most famous pieces is Everyone I Ever Slept With 1963-1995, a tent appliquEd with names. Another notorious work, My Bed--the scene where she spent four days contemplating suicide--was exhibited at Tate Britain when the artist was short-listed for the Turner prize in 1999. Though denounced by conservative critics at the outset, Emin's work has attracted serious critical attention for more than a decade. In the words of Art in America, "What brought Emin to prominence was shock value, but what keeps her work powerful as she continues is the strength and nuance of its form and content." Compiled in close collaboration with the artist herself--and unprecedented in its scope--this is the definitive book on Emin, featuring drawings, paintings, sculptures, appliquEs and embroideries, neon and video stills as well as her own writing."--Publisher's website.

The intimate memoirs of one of the most acclaimed and controversial artists of her generation. Here I am, a fucked, crazy, anorexic-alcoholic-childless, beautiful woman. I never dreamt it would be like this. 'Frequently affecting...intriguing, almost incantatory' Telegraph Tracey Emin's Strangeland is her own space, lying between the Margate of her childhood, the Turkey of her forefathers and her own, private-public life in present-day London. Her writings, a combination of memoirs and confessions, are deeply intimate, yet powerfully engaging. Tracey retains a profoundly romantic world view, paired with an uncompromising honesty. Her capacity both to create controversies and to strike chords is unequalled in British life. A remarkable book - and an original, beautiful mind. 'As spare and poignant as one of Emin's line drawings' Marie Claire

Tracey Emin has undergone an extraordinary metamorphosis from a young, unknown artist into the 'bad girl' of the Young British Art (yBA) movement, challenging the complacency of the art establishment in both her work and her life. Today she is arguably the doyenne of the British art scene and attracts more acclaim than controversy. Her work is known by a wide audience, yet rarely receives the critical attention it deserves. In Art Into Life: Essays on Tracey Emin writers from a range of art historical, artistic and curatorial perspectives examine how Emin's art, life and celebrity status have become inextricably intertwined. This innovative collection explores Emin's intersectional identity, including her Turkish-Cypriot heritage, ageing and sexuality, reflects on her early years as an artist, and debates issues of autobiography, self-presentation and performativity alongside the multi-media exchanges of her work and the tensions between art and craft. With its discussions of the central themes of Emin's art, attention to key works such as My Bed, and accessible theorization of her creative practice, Art into Life will interest a broad readership.

Regarded as one of the world's leading contemporary artists, Tracey Emin (born 1963) has gained international acclaim for her blunt, personal and revealing style, which elicits a broad spectrum of emotions ranging from shock to empathy to self-reflection. Drawing on personal experience, Emin often reveals painful situations with brutal honesty and poetic humor. I Followed You to the Sun features a very personal collection of works titled the Lonely Chair drawings, which are published here for the first time. In this series of self-portraits, Emin depicts a solitary female in her signature gestural style. The images are drawn from photographs that Emin took of herself and convey poignant emotions of longing and sadness. Emin's musings on love and loneliness are interspersed throughout the book and further illustrate the subconscious nature of the drawings. This artist's book is published on the occasion of Emin's exhibitions at both of Lehmann Maupin's New York locations.

This accessible and expertly written introduction and overview of Tracey Emin's life offers a completely up-to-date view on the work of one of the most important and respected artists working today. From some of her previously unpublished early works from the 1980s, through the period of the "Young British Artists" when she first found international fame, and up to her very latest works - many also published here for the first time - The Guardian's art critic Jonathan Jones brings together Tracey Emin's complete career into one concise and essential volume.