Tracey Emin Makes Bronze Doors for National Portrait Gallery

Tracey Emin b. 1963, United Kingdom Follow +

Tracey Emin‘s The Doors (2023) presents 45 female faces on the front doors of London‘s newly-renovated National Portrait Gallery, which reopens to the public on Thursday 22 June.

Emin’s fingerprints can be made out in the reliefs, which were cast in bronze from acrylic on paper drawings. They are part of the grand new entrance facing Leicester Square on Ross Place.

The addition of the 45 female faces counterbalances the original 18 sculptural roundels on the gallery’s portland stone exterior, which exclusively depict male figures such as Horace Walpole, Anthony van Dyck, and Joshua Reynolds.

Emin used her own likeness as a rough template for the portraits. She said she ‘didn’t want to depict specific or identifiable figures.’

‘I felt like the doors of the National Portrait Gallery should represent every woman, every age, and every culture throughout time,’ she said.

The National Portrait Gallery’s reopening follows a three-year makeover costing £41.3 million (US $52.8 million). —[O]

Main image: Tracey Emin, The Doors (2023) at the National Portrait Gallery, London. Photo: Oliver Hess.