Tracey Emin (b.1963)

The auction comprises eight prints by the celebrated British artist, Tracey Emin (Lots 14-21). Emin shot to fame as part of the YBA’s (Young British Artists) who took the art world by storm with their controversial take on contemporary art in the1990s. She created two seminal pieces that fundamentally re-defined the concept of art: ‘The Tent’ (1995) and ‘My Bed’ (1998), the latter earning her a Turner Prize nomination.

Known for creating works conveying experiences and events from her life, she uses a range of media including drawings, tapestries, embroidery, film, bronze sculptures, neon signs and wooden constructions. Personal monologue is an important thread within her work, and commonly her works are sexually provocative, their narratives have a raw openness that has often sparked debate amongst her viewers. Emin draws on her own experience and her introspection is clear in the works offered in the auction, she invites us into her world with playful titles and honest, even crude, self-portraiture with her works, ‘When I think About Sex’ (Lot 16), ‘Love Is What You Want’ (Lot 19), ‘Tracey X Tracey’ (Lot 14) and ‘Insane Reflection’ (Lot 17).

Paula Rego (1935-2002)

There are four lots featured by Dame Paula Rego (Lots 67-70). Rego was a Portuguese-British visual artist, who studied at the Slade School of Fine Art and worked with The London Group, alongside David Hockney and Frank Auerbach. Her first major solo exhibition in London was held at AIR Gallery in 1981, which was followed by an exhibition at the Serpentine Gallery in 1988. Becoming a celebrated artist during her own lifetime, in 2009 the Portuguese government opened a museum dedicated to her work, the Casa das Histórias Paula Rego. Internationally, Rego has reached wide acclaim and in 2021, Tate held a major retrospective of the artist’s work.

Known for her paintings and prints based on storytelling and folklore. Rego brought immense psychological insight and imaginative power to the genre of figurative art. Drawing upon her own life as well as politics, art history, literature, folk legends, myths and fairytales, Rego’s work at its heart focuses on the exploration of human relationships. She is celebrated for her works that address aspects of female agency, resolve, suffering and survival, such as the famous Abortion series.  This highly evocative imagery was used by campaigners in the successful second referendum in the legalisation of abortion in Portugal in 2007.

Printmaking has always been central to Rego’s practice, and allowed the artist to explore whole themes and ideas within a series of works. Featured in this auction are examples of her early work, ‘Secrets and Stories’ (Lot 68), ‘The Encampment’ (Lot 69) and ‘Embarkation’ (Lot 70), which particularly focus on storytelling, and the re-imagining of tales with sinister and unsettling undertones. In this vein, the sale showcases a rare and extensively hand-finished etching from 2006, which portrays a young woman in a brilliant yellow dress with a blue bow in her hair, initially it is these features that capture our attention, yet on closer inspection, we see that the figure is seated next to a baby’s high chair, the baby lies prone on her lap while placed in the high chair are two red bottles. Rego is constantly forcing us to contemplate and to question, so that we are consciously engaging with and reflecting on her art.

Cornelia Parker (b.1956)

Cornelia Parker is one of Britain’s most acclaimed contemporary artists and is best known for her impressive installations and conceptual works. Perhaps most famous for her ‘Cold Dark Matter: An Exploded View’, which re-created an exploding shed with each shard suspended around the original site of detonation. She reconfigures domestic objects to question our relationship with the world, using transformation, playfulness and storytelling, to engage her viewers with the important social and political issues. True to this, ‘A Little Drop of Gin’ (Lot 60) was commissioned by The Foundling Museum, London, when Parker was the artist in residence there in 2016. Inspired by the museum’s collection, it explores issues around alcohol and the abandonment of children particularly in Victorian England, where gin was nicknamed ‘Mother’s Ruin’.

Much of Parker’s work portrays concern with the more insidious effects of global warming and consumerism. She has collaborated with institutions such as HM Customs & Excise, Royal Armouries, Madame Tussauds and Victoria & Albert Museum, and was nominated for the Turner Prize in 1997.

Susan Hiller (1940-2019)

Susan Hiller was a US-born conceptual artist who spent the majority of her career living and working in London. Hiller first pursued a degree in anthropology and it was not until the late 1960s that she moved to the UK to start her artistic career. Her broad range of artistic media included installation, video, photography, painting, sculpture, performance, artist's books and writing. However, she was best known for her innovative large-scale multimedia installations. Throughout her career, Hiller has been drawn to the relationship between rational and irrational, applying her background in anthropology to her working practice, she described herself as a ‘second-generation’ conceptual artist.

Of the three works in the sale (Lots 31-33), two are from the series ‘Addenda to Dedicated to the Unknown Artists’. This series was first presented as an exhibition installation at the Tate featuring 300 collaged, tinted and hand-painted postcards that Hiller collected from seaside towns and junk shops, all inspired by or titled ‘rough sea’ (Lot 32). These picture postcards portray the crashing sea along with shipping charts and maps. By employing the imagery of the stormy sea and its thunderous depths, Hiller connotes those lost at sea and frequently memorialised in Britain with her tribute to forgotten artists. In a 2019 critique of this series, Lynne Tillman writes ‘Through their infinite stasis, absolute stillness, the images speak to the permanence of the irrational and of Nature’s uncontrollable forces’.

Auction Details

Thursday 24 October, 1pm BST
Forum Auctions, 4 Ingate Place, Battersea, London SW8 3NS

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