Sex and death at UK Royal Academy show

A visitor views the art piece ''Woman at Work'' by artist Margaret Calvert at the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition in London June 4, 2008.

LONDON (Reuters) - British artist Tracey Emin has "sexed up" the Summer Exhibition at London's Royal Academy, bringing graphic images to an annual event traditionally seen as a strait-laced celebration of art.

The 44-year-old, a central figure in the Young British Artist movement with Damien Hirst, was confident the room she curated at this year's show would appeal to young and old alike.

"The nice middle-aged ladies ... I think they can't wait to get into this room," she told reporters on Wednesday at a press preview for the exhibition, now in its 240th year.

Signs at the entrance to the room warn: "There are works in this gallery which are shocking."

They included Mat Collishaw's depiction of a zebra copulating with a woman and a photograph of Hirst in a morgue laughing next to the bloated head of a dead man.

In notes accompanying the gallery, Emin argued that the Hirst photograph had "documentary significance" because it was "the moment when Damien, then 17 or so, crossed the boundary and his career took off."

Hirst's work, which often sells for millions of dollars, has long explored the theme of death, through dead animals preserved in formaldehyde to a more recent diamond-encrusted platinum skull which has been valued at up to $100 million.

Collishaw's "In the Old Fashioned Way" is designed to move, and when working, Emin predicted, "will give everyone a thrill."

Renowned for art that is designed to shock, Emin said she was honored to be a member of the Royal Academy, despite the institution's reputation for being prestigious and stuffy.

"I like the restraint that it has, because that means you can break the rules, you can step outside it," Emin said.

WORLD'S BIGGEST

According to the Royal Academy, its summer show is the world's largest open-submission contemporary art exhibition, with around 10,000 works in all media submitted this year from which just over 1,000 were selected.

They include established artists like Georg Baselitz, Anish Kapoor and Jeff Koons as well as up-and-coming painters and sculptors fresh out of art school.

Many of the works are for sale, ranging from 50 pounds for a watercolor by Jeremiah Scanlon to $23.6 million for a towering sculpture by Shirazeh Houshiary.

Some are not, including Koons's "Cracked Egg (Blue)." His "Hanging Heart (Magenta/Gold)" sold for million pounds in November, then a record for a living artist's work at auction.

The Royal Academy awards 70,000 pounds ($136, 800) in prize money, including 25,000 pounds to the overall winner. Previous winners include R.B. Kitaj in 1997 and Jake and Dinos Chapman in 2003.

There is also a gallery dedicated to Kitaj this year. The U.S.-born artist, who spent much of his life in Britain and who died last year aged 74, was considered one of the leading influences on the pop art movement.

The Summer Exhibition runs from June 9 to August 17.