Tracey Emin is a British artist known for making works that convey experiences and events from her own life by using a range of media, from needlework and drawing, to sculpture and installation. Her works can often be sexually provocative and their stories are revealed with a raw openness, which has often sparked debate

Until she was seven Emin lived in a Margate hotel owned by her Turkish-Cypriot father. Her nostalgia for the English seaside town is often present in her work.

Emin was part of the Young British Artists group which took the art world by storm with their controversial take on contemporary art in the late 1980s. Other YBAs included Sarah Lucas and Damien Hirst.

Tracey Emin is a British artist whose work draws directly from the intimate experiences, memories, and emotional landscapes of her own life. Using media as varied as drawing, needlework, sculpture, painting, neon, and installation, she creates pieces that are often raw, confessional, and unapologetically direct. Her narratives explore sexuality, trauma, desire, shame, and vulnerability with an openness that has sparked discussion since the beginning of her career. Emin spent her early childhood in Margate, where her Turkish Cypriot father owned a hotel, and the nostalgia and melancholy of the seaside town recur throughout her practice as symbols of longing, loss, and formative memory. Rising to prominence as part of the [Young British Artists](https://fairart.com/editorial/insights/young-british-artists-redefining-contemporary-art/179) in the late 1980s, alongside figures such as Sarah Lucas and [Damien Hirst](https://fairart.com/artists/damien-hirst/1289), Emin helped redefine what contemporary art could be in Britain through works that confronted the personal and the political with equal force.

## About Tracey Emin

Born in 1963, Tracey Emin studied at Maidstone College of Art before completing her MA at the Royal College of Art. She became one of the defining voices of the Young British Artists, a loose group whose boundary-pushing works shaped the cultural climate of the late twentieth century. Emin’s practice has always been grounded in autobiography, entwining memory, confession, and self-examination. Her early life in Margate, marked by instability and emotional upheaval, became a key source of imagery and emotional content in her works.

Her breakthrough exhibitions in the 1990s placed her at the centre of public debate. Emin’s ability to collapse the boundaries between art and lived experience reconfigured expectations around authenticity and the role of the artist’s voice. Over the years she has expanded her practice across painting, bronze sculpture, neon texts, and monumental public works, establishing herself as a major figure in British and international contemporary art.


Tracey Emin

British

One of England’s most celebrated contemporary painters, Howard Hodgkin (1932–2017) was deeply attuned to the interplay of gesture, color, and ground. His brushstrokes, set against wooden supports, often continue beyond the picture plane and onto the frame, breaking from traditional confines. Embracing time as a compositional element, his work is testament to his immersion in the intangibility of thoughts, feelings, and fleeting private moments.

Hodgkin was born in London and grew up in Hammersmith Terrace. During World War II he was evacuated to Long Island, New York, for three years. In the Museum of Modern Art, New York, he saw works by School of Paris artists such as Henri Matisse, Édouard Vuillard, and Pierre Bonnard, which he could not easily have seen then in London or Paris. Back in England in 1943, Hodgkin ran away from Eton College and Bryanston School, convinced that education would impede his progress as an artist, though he encountered inspiring teachers at both schools. He then attended Camberwell School of Arts and Crafts (1949–50) and Bath Academy of Art, Corsham (1950–54).

Hodgkin never belonged to a school or group. While many of his contemporaries were drawn to Pop or the School of London, he remained independent, initially marking his outsider status with a series of portraits of contemporary artists and their families. His first solo exhibition was at Arthur Tooth and Sons in London in 1962. Two years later he first visited India, following his interest in Indian miniatures, which began during his time at Eton. Collecting Indian art would remain a lifelong passion, which he initially supported by dealing in picture frames.

In 1984 Hodgkin represented Britain at the Biennale di Venezia. His exhibition Forty Paintings reopened the Whitechapel Gallery, London, in 1985, and he won the Turner Prize the same year. In 1998 Hodgkin joined Gagosian, and the gallery presented his first show in the United States since his critically acclaimed 1995–96 exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, which had traveled to the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, Texas; Kunstverein für die Rheinlande und Westfalen, Düsseldorf; and Hayward Gallery, London. His first full retrospective opened at the Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin, in 2006 and traveled to Tate Britain, London, and Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid. In the autumn of 2016 Hodgkin visited India for what was to be the last time, completing six new paintings before his return to London. These works were shown at England’s Hepworth Wakefield in 2017, in Painting India, a show that focused on the artist’s long-standing relationship with the Indian subcontinent.

Starting in the 1950s, Hodgkin maintained a parallel printmaking practice, translating his visual language into works on paper. Exploring the interactions of color and space on a grander scale, he produced theatrical set designs for Ballet Rambert, the Royal Ballet, and the Mark Morris Dance Group. His black stone and white marble mural fronts the British Council’s headquarters in New Delhi. Additionally, Hodgkin designed a stamp for the Royal Mail to mark the millennium; textiles for Designers Guild; and posters and prints for the Olympic Games in Sarajevo, London, Sochi, and Rio de Janeiro.

Hodgkin was knighted in 1992 and made a Companion of Honour in 2003. He was awarded the Shakespeare Prize in Hamburg in 1997, and in 2014 won the first Swarovski Whitechapel Gallery Art Icon award.

Howard Hodgkin

Bridget Riley’s intricate, stylish geometric abstractions helped pioneer the Op Art movement in the 1960s. The British painter arrayed colorful shapes across her canvases in a way that induced the appearance of vibration or movement; such optical effects gave Op Art its name. Though Riley created some black-and-white canvases early in her career, she is better known for compositions that feature jubilant hues. Riley studied at Goldsmiths’ College and the Royal College of Art and worked briefly in advertising before transitioning to full-time artmaking. She has exhibited in London, New York, Los Angeles, Paris, Shanghai, Tokyo, and Hong Kong, among many other cities. Her work belongs in the collections of institutions including Arts Council England, the Centre Pompidou, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Tate, and the Stedelijk Museum and has fetched millions of dollars on the secondary market.

Bridget Riley’s intricate geometric abstractions helped define the Op Art movement of the 1960s, a moment in which perception itself became the subject of artistic inquiry. Through rhythmic arrangements of lines, curves, and vibrant colour sequences, Riley engineered optical effects that create the sensation of vibration, expansion, or movement across the surface of the canvas. While her early black-and-white works introduced these perceptual phenomena with striking clarity, she is best known today for her jubilant colour compositions, where precise chromatic relationships generate shifting visual experiences. Riley studied at Goldsmiths’ College and the Royal College of Art and briefly worked in advertising before committing fully to painting. Over the decades she has exhibited internationally in London, New York, Los Angeles, Paris, Shanghai, Tokyo, and Hong Kong. Her work forms part of major institutional collections including Arts Council England, the Centre Pompidou, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Tate, and the Stedelijk Museum, and her paintings and prints continue to achieve millions on the secondary market.

## About Bridget Riley

Born in 1931 in London and raised partly in Cornwall during the Second World War, Riley developed a deep sensitivity to light, landscape, and visual sensation from a young age. After studying at Goldsmiths’ College and then the Royal College of Art, she spent several years working in commercial advertising, honing her eye for clarity and precision. By the late 1950s and early 1960s she began producing the works that would define her early career: black-and-white optical paintings that invited perceptual instability, generating waves, pulsations, and illusions of depth.

Riley’s breakthrough came with her inclusion in the 1965 exhibition The Responsive Eye at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, which positioned her as a leading figure in Op Art. Since then she has continued to expand her visual vocabulary, moving into colour-based abstraction that explores rhythm, repetition, and the psychology of seeing. Her career spans more than six decades and is celebrated for its intellectual rigour, formal beauty, and ongoing exploration of perception.


Bridget Riley

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London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games Posters Set