Emin’s prints have a diaristic aspect and frequently depict events from the past. As with this print, they frequently incorporate text as well as image. The text appears as the artist’s stream of consciousness voice, like here, at times addressed to another. Her use of seemingly naïve misspellings appear, here misspelling weird, helps to locate the words in the artist’s adolescent past. The rapid, one-off technique involved in making mono block prints is perfectly suited to Emin’s immediate expression, as is her loose drawing style. Messy blotches of ink on the page add to the sense of obsessive ‘free’ expression. It has an immediacy and often sexually provocative attitude that firmly locates her oeuvre within the tradition of feminist discourse. By re-appropriating conventional handicraft techniques – or ‘women’s work’ – for radical intentions, her work resonates with the feminist tenets of the ‘personal as political’.
This work is really unique in that it is a one off rather than from a limited edition series with a great provenance. It was gifted by Tracey Emin to her friend Nancy Dell’Olio. A signed letter from Dell’Olio can be found on the verso of this print. The work was also conceived in the same year as Emin’s acclaimed work ‘Everyone I Have Ever Slept With 1963 – 1995’.
