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Tracey Emin

A Moment Without You, 2017

Bronze and patinated steel Dimensions variable

Tracey Emin’s A Moment Without You comprises five sculpted bronze birds positioned on top of a series of high poles. For Emin, the diminutive life-sized forms serve as symbols of hope, faith and spirituality: ‘I’ve always had the idea that birds are angels of this earth and that they represent freedom’.

Emin has noted: ‘Most public sculptures are a symbol of power which I find oppressive and dark … I wanted something that had a magic and an alchemy, something which would appear and disappear and not dominate’. There is a poignancy in the elevation of these small creatures, physically and metaphorically, as they benignly watch the world below.

Regarded as one of the world’s most significant contemporary artists, Tracey Emin’s art is primarily expressionistic, a cypher for memories and emotions that can be frank and poetic, intimate and universal. Drawing on personal experiences, Emin often reveals emotional situations with brutal honesty.

Courtesy of the Artist and White Cube

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Biography

Regarded as one of the world’s most significant contemporary artists, Tracey Emin’s art is primarily expressionistic, a cypher for memories and emotions that can be frank and poetic, intimate and universal. Drawing on personal experiences, Emin often reveals emotional situations with brutal honesty.

Tracey Emin (b.1963, London) studied at Maidstone College of Art (1984) and the Royal College of Art, London (1989). She represented Great Britain at the Venice Biennale in 2007 and was elected a Royal Academician in the same year. In 2011, Emin became the Professor of Drawing at the Royal Academy of Arts, London, and in 2013 Queen Elizabeth II appointed her Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire for her contributions to the visual arts.

Emin’s work has been exhibited extensively in solo and group exhibitions around the world. Most recently, she exhibited alongside Edvard Munch at the Royal Academy in Tracey Emin / Edvard Munch: The Loneliness of the Soul (2020-21), which followed her solo shows Detail of Love, Xavier Hufkens (2020), A Fortnight of Tears, White Cube (2019) and The Fear of Loving, Musée d’Orsay (2019). Emin lives and works in London, France and Margate.

Images:
Angus Mill

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