Travelling Chess Set

Tracey Emin (born 1963)

Whitworth Art Gallery

2008

Emin's chess set combines needlework, small-scale sculpture and her trademark nervous, scratchy drawings. Emin employs materials and strategies similar to those in her other work, particularly the appliquéd blankets and monoprint drawings, but uses the game of chess to express the heated intimacies of the courtship ritual. Her work uses art as a raw form of confession, in which she lays bare her hopes, humiliations, failures and successes with equal measures of humour and pathos. The Whitworth holds collections of fine art and historic and contemporary textiles. The set is highly 'crafted' and raises interesting questions for the gallery about the relative status of art and craft and about the use of textile and craft practice as a strategy in the making of art.

• Medium: bronze; fabric; silver brooch; wood & glass display case
• Dimensions: 58.8 x 91.5 x 52cm
• Art Fund Grant: £9375 ( Total: £25,000)
• ArtFunded in: 2009
• Vendor: RS & A Ltd

Provenance

Commissioned from the artist by RS&A Ltd.

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