Emin to titillate fusty Royal Academy

Tracey Emin, the superannuated enfant terrible of British contemporary art, has attracted (entirely intentionally, most will assume) the scorn of a number of distinguished Royal Academicians for an exhibition she has curated as part of this year's RA Summer Exhibition.

In keeping with her personal obsessions, Emin, 44, has included close-up photographs of a woman's genitalia during menstruation, an automaton depicting a zebra having sex with a woman and a video of a woman dancing in a hula-hoop of barbed wire that cuts and draws blood from her body. A notice on the entrance to the room that holds her selection reads: "There are some works in this gallery which may cause offence".

Says one Academician, sculptor Ivor Abrahams: "It's a disgrace. They are using the RA to shock us with pretentious rubbish. This isn't truly representative of the RA. It's provocative and offensive. It's like the old pier entertainment. You put your penny in and look at 'what the butler saw'."

Emin, who was recently appointed an Academician herself, is unrepentant about her choices, which can be seen from June 9. "The majority of people will be titillated and enjoy what they've seen. It's not shocking in a provocative way. I don’t think posh ladies will come into my room and feel let down because they can’t find any pubic hair."

Writing in the Times, the art critic Rachel Campbell Johnson summed up Emin and her show, saying that she is "like a naughty little girl who pulls up her skirt to the public to prove that she is wearing no knickers". ·