Photograph by Phil Polglaze
As Tracey Emin: A Second Life opens at Tate Modern, we’re looking back at her exhibition at SLG, 29 years later!
Tracey Emin is one of the most important contemporary artists of her generation. She became a household name in the ’90s with iconic works like her Turner Prize nominated My Bed, which sparked public debate, challenging what art could be.
Emin looks to her own life for inspiration and material. She explores themes of love, desire, loss and grief in painting, sculpture, photography and installation. Her work is disarmingly and unashamedly emotional. As she says: “The most beautiful thing is honesty, even if it’s really painful to look at.”
Recently, Emin’s work has been concerned with her health. In 2020, she was diagnosed with bladder cancer and underwent surgery. Her paintings of the nude figure have a new, tempestuous energy and sense of urgency. She depicts the body fluctuating between joy and suffering on its journey between birth and death.
The impact of her work on other artists is undeniable. Through the Tracey Emin Foundation in Margate, she has made a significant positive contribution to artists’ lives. The foundation supports the visual arts in Margate by offering studio spaces, residency programmes and exhibitions to artists at TES where Emin plays an active role as a mentor and source of inspiration.
In 1997, the SLG hosted I Need Art Like I Need God, a significant survey of Tracey Emin’s work. The exhibition created an opportunity for the artist to show a broad range of work in varied media including neon, photography, video, film, soft sculpture and hand-sewn texts.
At the time, Emin often started work with the written word, then translating text into visual representations. Her work addresses the human condition in a way that is personal but also accessible to a broad audience.
Speaking to Frieze in 2024, she said that making work is “absolutely cathartic”. The title of her exhibition in 1997, shows us that this is how she has always felt about being an artist. For Emin, art is her faith.
Installation views of Tracey Emin’s exhibition I Need Art Like I Need God at the South London Gallery, 1997
The SLG is proud to have hosted a Tracey Emin’s first institutional show in 1997, titled Need Art Like I Need God. Her now infamous work, ‘Everyone I Have Ever Slept With 1963–1995′ was also commissioned for a group show, Minky Manky, curated by Carl Freedman at the SLG two years earlier, in 1995. Before this, a young Tracey Emin was also photographed at the SLG in our 1991 exhibition A Slice of Southwark: Southwark Open Exhibition (Centenary Year).
Her 1994 monoprint, Nice Dog – Me and Prince, is in the South London Gallery’s contemporary collection. These works are amongst a number of early prints in which the artist represents details from her childhood, the characteristic intense, spidery lines possess a child-like immediacy that fits the apparently innocent subjects.
Tracey Emin, Nice Dog – Me and Prince, 1976 (1994), monoprint
Tracey Emin: A Second Life is at Tate Modern from 27 Feb – 31 Aug 2026.
Take a look through the SLG archives to see more installation photos from her 1997 exhibition.
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