Laying With The Olive Trees
Laying With The Olive Trees
Signed Print
Tracey Emin
£3,150-£4,700Value Indicator
$6,500-$10,000 Value Indicator
$5,500-$8,500 Value Indicator
¥30,000-¥45,000 Value Indicator
€3,650-€5,500 Value Indicator
$30,000-$45,000 Value Indicator
¥580,000-¥870,000 Value Indicator
$4,000-$6,000 Value Indicator
AAGR (5 years) This estimate blends recent public auction records with our own private sale data and network demand.
There aren't enough data points on this work for a comprehensive result. Please speak to a specialist by making an enquiry.
Medium: Lithograph
Edition size: 150
Year: 2011
Size: H 55cm x W 55cm
Signed: Yes
Format: Signed Print
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Auction Results
| Auction Date | Auction House | Location | Hammer Price | Return to Seller | Buyer Paid |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| June 2024 | Phillips Hong Kong | Hong Kong | |||
| November 2023 | Bonhams Online | United Kingdom | |||
| July 2023 | Tate Ward Auctions | United Kingdom | |||
| July 2023 | Tate Ward Auctions | United Kingdom | |||
| June 2023 | Rosebery's Fine Art Auctioneers | United Kingdom | |||
| December 2018 | Woolley & Wallis | United Kingdom | |||
| December 2016 | Christie's New York | United States |
Meaning & Analysis
British artist Tracey Emin’s Laying With The Olive Trees is a signed lithograph executed in 2011. The work is one of the two unique prints Emin created in conjunction with her retrospective exhibition at the Hayward Gallery titled “Love is What You Want”. The print belongs to a limited edition of 150.
British artist Tracey Emin gained notoriety for being confrontational and intensely personal. In this grouping, the artist presents her fearless prose through the means of printmaking, allowing her inner world to unfold within two inky limited edition artworks. The works were created to coincide with her retrospective exhibition “Love is What You Want”, held at the Hayward Gallery in 2011.
The poignant collection features the artist’s own body as a memory well of loss and longing. In these poignant works on paper, Emin charts the bittersweet nature of remembrance. She investigates how it can function as a container of catharsis as well as a source of consolation. While a need for recollection underpins these works, the Love Is What You Want prints primarily address the remnants of physical intimacy.
Laying With The Olive Trees uses the repeated motif of the flourishing olive tree to counteract the stillness of the female figure lying at the centre of the composition. The landscape is an ambivalent mix between a desert and an ocean, placing the solitary female in limbo. Is she thirsting or drowning? The woman appears wounded, her shadows leaking out beyond her contours while the trees, unrooted, float above, guarding her body.
Tracey Emin, born in 1963, stands as a fearless provocateur in the contemporary art scene. A trailblazer of the Young British Artists (YBA) movement in the late 1980s, the artist has sparked conversation and controversy for decades. Confronting themes of love, trauma and femininity with great vulnerability, Emin's work is a visceral tapestry of her life and has forged an intimate dialogue between artist and audience. In 1999, this raw approach to storytelling won her a nomination to the Turner Prize and, in 2007, it got her a coveted spot as a Royal Academician at the Royal Academy of Arts (RA).
