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About To Fly - Signed Print by Tracey Emin 2014 - MyArtBroker

About To Fly
Signed Print

Tracey Emin

£1,500-£2,300Value Indicator

$2,950-$4,550 Value Indicator

$2,700-$4,150 Value Indicator

¥14,000-¥21,000 Value Indicator

1,800-2,800 Value Indicator

$14,500-$23,000 Value Indicator

¥280,000-¥440,000 Value Indicator

$1,900-$2,900 Value Indicator

-4% AAGR

AAGR (5 years) This estimate blends recent public auction records with our own private sale data and network demand.

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Medium: Etching

Edition size: 200

Year: 2014

Size: H 30cm x W 33cm

Signed: Yes

Format: Signed Print

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Track auction value trend

The value of Tracey Emin’s About To Fly (signed) is estimated to be worth between £1,500 and £2,300. This etching print, created in 2014, has shown consistent value growth with an average annual growth rate of 3%. This work has an auction history of five sales since its entry to the market in September 2016. Over the past 12 months, the average selling price was £1,915, across a total of 1 artwork sold. In the last five years, the hammer price has ranged from £1,915 in April 2024 to £3,200 in January 2022. The average return to the seller is currently £2,072. The edition size of this artwork is limited to 200.

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Auction Results

Auction DateAuction HouseLocation
Hammer Price
Return to Seller
Buyer Paid
April 2024Lyon & Turnbull Edinburgh United Kingdom
September 2022Bonhams Knightsbridge United Kingdom
January 2022Phillips London United Kingdom
September 2018Chiswick Auctions United Kingdom
September 2016Wilson55 United Kingdom

Meaning & Analysis

Raised in the seaside town of Margate, seagulls would have been a constant presence in Emin’s youth. The bird has also been an important motif throughout her artistic career, and was the primary subject of her 2004 plaster work In My Family When Someone Dies They Are Cremated And Their Ashes Are Thrown Across The Sea. For Emin, seagulls are equated with family, togetherness, and reminiscences of her youth in Margate.

Within this particular work, the seagull is depicted alone, and Emin’s expressive mark-making gives the bird a sense of motion. The bird itself, which Emin’s title describes as “about to fly”, is potentially a foil for Emin herself. Like the seagull she depicts, Emin too was ready to fledge the nest of Margate, the site of her distressed adolescent years, and escaped to London at the young age of fifteen.

  • 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).

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