Tracey Emin: Craft work

This week, the Royal Academy of Arts presents the first retrospective of Tracey Emin's monoprints. To celebrate, she talks to Arifa Akbar and introduces an exclusive offer

view gallery VIEW GALLERY

For some, Tracey Emin will always be synonymous with the boldness of her piece My Bed, and the conceptual art movement it came to embody in the 1990s. The Turner Prize-nominated installation, with its detritus of dirty linen, used condoms and blood-stained underwear, was one of the most visited in the history of the Tate – and transformed its creator into an "art star". Yet, while many remember the shock value of My Bed, or the confessional quilts and tents with the embroidered names of Everyone I Ever Slept With, Emin's oeuvre has always engaged with traditional crafts – print-making, appliqué, drawing, etching and embroidery. And this summer, the Royal Academy of Arts (RA) will present the first retrospective dedicated to Emin's immense body of monoprints, focusing on works dating from 1994 to now.

Emin herself says there is no distinction to be made between these and the bolder conceptual works that made her part of the "Sensation" generation: "The prints start off with an idea," she explains. "It's not like I'm hurling myself on to the paper. I start off with a concept or a dialogue. Most of the work has been done by hand – the sculptures, embroidery, prints are all hand-made, not machine-made. Even My Bed is very intimate. What's flashy is the attention given to it."

Printmaking, says Emin, was her first love – she completed a Fine Art and Print-making degree at Maidstone Art College which she describes as "one of the best experiences of [her] life". The prints, etchings and lithographs in the forth-coming RA show, trace the recurringly introspective, self-questioning and often dark subject-matter with which she has grappled over her career: "In my prints now, I'm still asking the same questions that I was asking in 1994, but I may be getting different answers. Things recur. I might have thought something at 20 but [later] I'll think about it differently... my conclusion [may be] different," she says.

The artist believes there is an extraordinarily evocative, even quaint, element to the medium: "I've always had a love of printmaking because of the magic and alchemy of it all. You never really know how it's going to be until you turn the paper over. I find printmaking a very intimate practice. When I was younger, I'd print my own prints, but I get technicians to do it now. When I do wood cuts, I print them off by hand, using a spoon," she explains. "Lots of art schools have lost their print presses; they do digital prints only now. When you go to old workshops, it's like going back in history: the cogs, the smell of the wheels, it's really evocative. I say: bring back traditional printmaking." Employing this old-fashioned craft to delve into the unconscious is a deliberate juxtaposition of the medium and the message, she adds.

Like the late Louise Bourgeois – with whom she worked to create 16 prints that will be shown in New York this September – Emin employs the lightness of traditional "women's crafts", like sewing, to explore what Bourgeois classed as the "volcanic unconscious" which we only ever encounter in parts: "That's why I use a lot of embroidery," Emin explains. "I take this craft but I don't treat it like a craft, but like high art. I didn't know who Louise Bourgeois was until 1996. I had started on my own trajectory and I was so amazed when I came across her."

The print Mother Brother, one of four available as part of The Independent Magazine's exclusive reader offer, was first conceived by Emin as a form of wordplay: "When I was doing the etching for this, I wrote the 'r' backwards deliberately. It was a play on words... It might sound corny but there's a part of you that you don't know is within you. The 'r' triggered that for me."

Sleep Again, another print available through the offer, features a small figure curled up in bed and was adapted from an old idea: "I did a smaller image in 1994, which was actually a child lying on a bed with a penis emerging," Emin recalls. "Now, it's a woman on the bed with a penis image, but this time it's funny – the penis appears almost to be looking at her..."

No Time, the third print in the series, grapples with that "deep, immense sleeplessness that comes when you lie in bed, and your thoughts just go around and around," Emin says. The image was to have been part of her abortion drawings series but she later changed her mind. "The trolley looks like an operating trolley or a morgue table. It's a dark image; in fact, a lot of these images are dark."

Finally, At Night – showing a woman lying in bed, with what appears to be a foetus inside her – returns to the subject of abortion and is intensely psychological. "That's one of the things that is different now from 15 years ago. Then the work would have been much more to do with my mind than my heart," Emin reveals.

Far from being a "lost art", Emin believes printmaking is seeing a revival in edgy, metropolitan galleries and among younger artists: "The Tate recently asked me what I thought about their prints and drawings rooms, and the White Cube Gallery is about to have an exhibition of prints. People used to undervalue works on paper, but that's changing. What is wonderful about prints is that they are really accessible; they're the same price as a really expensive pair of shoes."

Walking With Tears, the first retrospective of Tracey Emin's prints, opens at the RA, London W1, on Tuesday

Independent Comment
blog comments powered by Disqus
News in pictures
World news in pictures
Arts & Ents blogs

Children’s Books: Recommended read – ‘A Monster Calls’ by Patrick Ness

Thirteen-year-old Conor awakes in bed one night to discover that the yew tree outside his house has ...

Made in Chelsea – Series 5, Episode 11

SPOILERS: Do not read this if you have not seen series 5, episode 11 of ‘Made in Chelsea’ It’s hard ...

The Returned: ‘Simon’ – Series 1, episode 2

Fragility of life looms large over an episode that closes with the scarring on Julie's stomach. Whil...

       
Independent
Travel Shop
Lake Como and the Bernina Express
Seven nights half-board from £749pp Find out more
Dubrovnik and the Dalmatian coast
Seven nights half-board from only £859pp Find out more
Prague city break
Three nights from only £199pp Find out more
 

ES Rentals

    Beards, brawn and body art

    Beards, brawn and body art

    Meet London’s new batch of male models
    Scandi-geeks descend on Nordicana for fan-convention

    Scandi-geeks descend on Nordicana for fan-convention

    British love of shows such as The Bridge, Borgen and The Killing shows no sign of fading
    Behind the rhetoric what is really being done to combat desertification?

    The Great Green Wall of Africa,

    Behind the rhetoric what is really being done to combat desertification?
    Laughter Inc: the cheering growth of the chuckle industry

    Laughter Inc

    The cheering growth of the chuckle industry
    The bad science scandal: how fact-fabrication is damaging UK's global name for research

    The bad science scandal

    How fact-fabrication is damaging UK's global name for research
    To the manor born: The female aristocrats battling to inherit the title

    Female aristocrats battle to inherit the title

    A passionate protest is gathering pace among the women of Britain's aristocracy, who believe that men should no longer automatically inherit the family pile and title.
    Love struck: Photographs of JFK's visit to Berlin 50 years ago reveal a nation instantly smitten

    In pictures: JFK's visit to Berlin in 1963

    Photographer Ulrich Mack accompanied Kennedy on the entire trip. The results are an astonishing record of a watershed moment.
    Eat shoots and leaves: Mark Hix gets creative with fresh peas, mangetouts and sugar snaps

    Mark Hix gets creative with English peas

    English peas and their offsprings, such as mangetouts and sugar snaps, are great tossed into a salad, says our chef.
    Ceviche with a smile: Chef Martin Morales has turned South America's elegant cuisine into one of London's hottest food trends

    Chef Martin Morales: Ceviche with a smile

    Morales has turned South America's elegant cuisine into one of London's hottest food trends
    Incredible edible: Guerrilla gardeners are planting veg for the masses in West Yorkshire

    Incredible edible: Guerrilla gardeners

    Holly Williams joins the volunteers who have turned a small town into a thriving community with a guerrilla gardening scheme that has provided a blueprint for sustainability.
    Seasoned to taste: The restaurants that draw happy diners back year after year

    Seasoned to taste: Food institutions

    In an industry famed for short-lived success and pop-up pretenders, it takes something special to stick around.
    Anatomy of a waiter: Service staff spill the secrets of their trade

    Anatomy of a waiter: Staff spill their secrets

    Next Sunday is the first ever National Waiters' Day. To celebrate, we share tales from the restaurant trenches by those in the front line.
    Drink in the sun: The season's best wines

    Drink in the sun: The season's best wines

    From complex English sparkling wine to juicy Sicilian reds...
    Iran election: Farewell Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, we’ll miss you – but not that much...

    Robert Fisk

    Farewell Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, we’ll miss you – but not that much...
    India sends its final telegram -(Stop)-

    After 163 years India sends its final telegram -(Stop)-

    Mobile phones and the internet have superseded the once-essential service