Commissioned Artwork - "For You" by Tracey Emin (20 September to 31 December 2008 - extended)

Internationally acclaimed artist Tracey Emin brings an especially-commissioned neon work, For You, (approx 46 x 686cm) to the Well of the Cathedral for the period of the Liverpool Biennial.  She says, 'The Church has always been a place, for me, for contemplation. I wanted to make something for Liverpool Cathedral about love and the sharing of love. Love is a feeling which we internalise; a feeling very hard to explain. I thought it would be nice for people to sit in the Cathedral and have a moment to contemplate the feelings of love, it's something which we just don't have enough time to think about and I hope this work creates this space in time.'

About Tracey Emin ...

Tracey Emin’s art is one of disclosure, using her life events as inspiration for works ranging from painting, drawing, video and installation, to photography, needlework and sculpture.  Emin reveals her hopes, humiliations, failures and successes in candid work that is frequently both tragic and humorous. 

Emin’s work has an immediacy and often sexually provocative attitude that firmly locates her within the tradition of feminist discourse.  By re-appropriating conventional handicraft techniques – or ‘women’s work’ – for radical intentions, Emin’s work resonates with the feminist tenets of the ‘personal as political’.  Her interest in the work of Edvard Munch and Egon Schiele particularly inform Emin’s paintings, monoprints and drawings, which explore complex personal states and ideas of self-representation through expressionist styles and themes. 

Tracey Emin was born in London in 1963 and lives and works in London .  She has exhibited internationally including solo and group exhibitions in Holland , , , and . In 1999 she was short listed for the Turner Prize at the Tate Gallery, London . She has had solo shows at the Stedelijk Museum (Amsterdam), Haus der Kunst (Munich), Modern Art (Oxford) 2002, Art Gallery of New South Wales () 2003 and Platform Garanti Contemporary Art Center ( Istanbul ) in 2004. In June 2007 Tracey Emin was made a Royal Academician and represented at the 52^nd Venice Biennale, becoming only the second female artist to do so.