Not to her face | Tracey Emin at The Conran Shop

Tracey Emin has never been shy about putting herself at the centre of her art.

Tracey Emin - Over and Out (2020), Edition of 50, 2 colour lithograph on Somerset Velvet Warm White. 400gsm. Produced by Counter Studio, Margate, 65.5 x 55.5 cm, Signed, numbered and dated by the artist. Courtesy of Tanya Baxter

In her early career, this reflected a provocative, feisty personality: she came to the fore as one of the prominent YBAs at Charles Saatchi’s 1997 Sensation show at the Royal Academy with the installation Everyone I Have Ever Slept With; two years later her Turner nomination entry was another installation, the readymade My Bed, featuring used condoms and blood-stained underwear.

Those works are still talked about today (sometimes with palpable outrage). And, as landmarks in the history of modern British art, so they should be. But it would be short-sighted to dismiss Emin as a mere provocateur, raising questions about the nature of art. Now 60, Professor Emin teaches students Drawing at the Royal Academy, and runs the impressive TKE Studios, supporting aspiring artists in her native Margate. She has, over the years, demonstrated her prodigious talent in many mediums, including installation, sculpture, painting, printing, textiles, photography, film and neon.

There has been a solo show in the British Pavilion of the Venice Biennale (2007), retrospectives at the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art (2008), and the Hayward Gallery (2011), that poster commission from the London Olympics (2012) and – organised while she was ill with cancer – a joint exhibition with her hero and major influence Edvard Munch at the RA (2020). The choice of Emin to decorate the doors of the new National Portrait Gallery earlier this year perhaps marked a new phase in her career: might I dare suggest that she has become an establishment artist?

Not to her face, obviously.

The Munch show – which later travelled to Olso – included a poignant series of self-portrait lithographs exploring the theme of loneliness, executed during her illness. Each work was created as part of a series of 50 in her Margate studio. Several examples will be on display during British Art Fair (and until October 9) on the ground floor of The Conran Shop’s new flagship store in Sloane Square, to mark a partnership with the Fair. The prints have been chosen by the Conran group from the collection of Chelsea gallerist Tanya Baxter, who also has a stand at the Fair, alongside a pair of mid-career abstracts by John Hoyland, Turn Turn (1983) and Helel (1988). It’ll be well worth making the short trip from the Saatchi: looking into the eyes of Emin’s portraits takes you some way into her soul, and it’s a frightening place to be. These are powerful works, by a significant artist at the very top of her game.