1994

GMA 4784 I

The Family Suite monoprints are among the very earliest and most deeply personal of Emin’s works. The series recalls moments from her childhood in Margate where she lived with her family in a hotel run by her father. Family Suite includes images of Emin’s mother lighting up; her father with his briefcase; a haunting self portrait as a ten-year old; the false front teeth she had fitted at the age of twelve, after her brother had accidentally head-butted her; and various images of sex – perhaps showing Emin herself, or scenes she witnessed. The dark, nervous line created by the monoprint technique gives the works something of the directness of children’s’ drawings.

• Material: Monoprint
• Size: 11.60 x 10.60 cm (framed 38.00 x 36.50 cm)
• National Galleries of Scotland
• © Tracey Emin 2008

1993

Uncle Colin is a homage to a favourite uncle who was killed in a car crash. It includes photographs of him, a newspaper page which reports the crash and the packet of cigarettes he was clutching at the time. Binding the elements together is Emin’s poignant letter to him. Such raw, emotional work ran completely counter to the ‘cool’ ethos which was fashionable in young British art at the time.

• Material: Six framed items of memorabilia
• Private collection, Belgium
• © the artist

1995

Emin loved dancing and hoped to become a professional. As a teenager she competed in the final rounds of a dance competition in Margate, but her moment of glory ended when she was heckled by local lads. This short, haunting film recreates that episode, but in it Emin turns tragedy into triumph.

• Material: Video
• White Cube, London
• © the artist

1993

Emin grew up in the Hotel International, a seafront hotel in Margate owned by her father. This work, composed of letters sewn onto a big blanket and handwritten texts, is a kind of curriculum vitae, detailing episodes in her childhood and youth.

• Material: Appliqué blanket
• Rachel and Jean-Pierre Lehmann Collection
• © the artist

1998

The bed is unmade and the sheets are dirty, and at its side, scattered on a dusty blue carpet, are bottles, pill packets, cigarettes, condoms, a soft toy and other unsavoury items which tell of drunken nights and a life on the edge. This iconic and extraordinary work is still shocking a decade after it was made.

• Material: Mixed media
• The Saatchi Gallery, London
• © the artist

1998

Following an abortion in 1990, Emin stopped painting, and for six years she felt unable to paint again. She forced herself out of this blockage by staging an exhibition in which she lived and slept in an art gallery, surrounded by nothing but painting materials. Gallery visitors could see her through peep-holes. This work recreates that entire room.

• Material: Mixed media
• The Saatchi Gallery, London
• © the artist

2001

Emin has stated that writing lies at the heart of her work. Writing features in her blankets, her paintings and her films, and also in her neon works, which she has been making for more than a decade. Commentators have noted that her neons recall the signage at the fairground and the seafront booths at Margate.

• White Cube, London
• © the artist

2002

One of the themes in the exhibition, and in Emin’s art in general, is pregnancy. She had two abortions in the early 1990s and since then, in texts, films, sculptures, and embroidered blankets, has examined the theme of motherhood, often in a tender way which has surprised her critics.

• Private collection, courtesy Art Gallery of New South Wales, Australia
• © the artist

2005

This huge work recreates the roller-coaster at Margate’s ‘Dreamland’ fairground. The fairground was a central part of Emin’s youth: it was exciting, seedy and sexually charged.

• White Cube, London
• © the artist