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Neon

Be Faithful to Your Dreams

Tracy Emin (UK)

LUMIERE LONDON 2018, LUMIERE DURHAM 2011

Poignant neon words in a forgotten graveyard. 

London-born Emin is one of Britain’s most celebrated contemporary artists. Since the early 1990s, she has used her own life as inspiration for her art, exposing the most harrowing and intimate details of her personal history through needlework, sculpture, drawing, photography, painting, and of course neon.

Emin (UK) uses neon to illuminate emotions, memories, feelings and ideas in graphic messages, sentences and poems. Translating handwriting and drawings into blown and bent neon tubing presents technical challenges, and the choice of words or images is crucial.

As the artists notes: “Neon is light, so, can you live with this thing glowing and the chemicals moving all the time?”

The Royal Academican studied at Maidstone College of Art and the Royal College of Art, London. She has exhibited extensively internationally including solo and group exhibitions in Holland, Germany, Japan, Australia and America. Emin represented Britain at the 52nd Venice Biennale, and has been awarded an Honorary Doctorate from the Royal College of Art, London, a Doctor of Letters from the University of Kent and Doctor of Philosophy from London Metropolitan University. In May 2011, Emin had a major solo exhibition at the Hayward, London.

Tracy Emin’s neon work Be Faithful to Your Dreams was presented at St Nicholas’s Chapel for Lumiere Durham 2011 and at St James’s Churchyard during Lumiere London 2018.

traceyeminstudio.com

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