Tracey Emin - Artist HARDtalk

held in prison for a day longer. Now it is time for HARDtalk.

Welcome to Margate, a traditional English seaside town, which is home

to the turn up contemporary art gallery. My guest today is Tracey

Emin. She was raised in Margate and who has become an artist of

international renown. She has an exhibition currently on in her old

home town. Her work is always deeply personal. She has made an

extraordinary journey from Wilde used to peeler of the British

cultural establishment. But just how blurred has the line being

between her art and her life? Tracey Emin, welcome to heart talk.

This is a very special exhibition for you. It is a homecoming. You

put this on in the town that you were raised in as a teenager. I

just wonder how much of the young Tracey Emin you feel is still in

you? The whole show is about the fact that there is hardly any young

Tracy a man in me any more, I'm nearly 50. The girl is never coming

back. She lay down deep beneath the sea, it is the end of everything

has been a goal. The understanding as an artist, I have maybe got 30

years left of work, and I need to prioritise and see what is

important to me. In the show, obviously, art is important to me.

And this is a different kind of exhibition. How long has it taken

for you to disconnect yourself from your past? Has it been a difficult

process? I think that being an artist and using my memory for my

work, I do not want to disconnect myself from my past completely, but

I would like to see it from a different perspective. I would like

to see it from the perspective of being an adult. I do not want to be

a screaming adolescent girl when I nearly 50. I want to get some

balance. But I don't want to be really boring. I want to develop.

And push things further. I think that in the show, I have done bad.

Does that process of maturing and changing, does it mean that you

overcome a lot of the pain and the anger that seemed to be in your

early work, and seemed to reflect so much of what happened to you as

a young woman in Margate and elsewhere. I think that I'm

actually lucky that I experienced so many things. I am a very

passionate person. I have deeper emotions. Some of my friends say

that I have containment issues. I'm constantly telling the truth. I am

always saying things that you should not say. But I am making

work about things that are a closed subject matter for a lot of people.

The show is about understanding that there is a different kind of

world. I always thought that love was about desire, being with

someone and holding them. But that is not necessary. But it can take

the form of lots of different guises. So it is blue embroidery,

it is about experiencing it in a different way. I have never done

that before. Maybe I did not understand love at all, all of my

life. Maybe I have been running after the wrong things, or

misunderstanding it. By working in developing these ideas, it helps me

understand how I want my future to be. It is not just about art, in he

is about leaving. You talk about love, that is

interesting. A lot of people will associate your name a week very

graphic art, not just drawing, but installation art and all sorts of

different presentations which alluded to terrible abuse that you

suffered. And also the way in which sex, for a time in your life,

seemed to be very Loveless. Correct me if I am wrong. I wonder if that

is your attitude to sex, has that changed?

As I said, I am really 50, any woman watching this will know

exactly what I'm talking about. I don't have sex any more. It is gone,

it is a closed subject. It might come back, who knows. But at the

moment, I'm interested in love and feelings and emotions and other

things. And something that is not dependent upon last and desire. I

am free from that. And I want to work with all of the other motion

has. Are you tired of talking about the

stuff that we -- was so explicit, in your earlier work? The failed

relationships, the abuse that he suffered when you were very young?

I don't have failed relationships any more, because I do not have

relationships. My priority at my moment is my work. And about how I

can develop it and what I can do. I still have all of those subject

matters that our work with and I still work with them, but maybe in

a more different way, or maybe I have exhausted doing it in one way,

this squealing adolescent girl, maybe she does not have it any more

energy. Maybe I need to sit down and think, what have I got, what

can I work with? I can work with my hands and my knowledge and my love

of art history. When you talk about the screamer

stuff,r stuff, I wonder how you feel about

it? Do you look back and think, one of the most famous works, my bed,

which was the disabled bed, which whole of the signs of sexual

relationships, it had the mess around the bed, it was so personal

and so brutal and so on us, Kenya later that any more, is it

difficult? Occasionally when it is shown, a few years ago in a number

I had a 20-year retrospective and I had to keep reinstalling the bed,

and every time I did it, every time I had to take a deep breath,

because it was like really throwing myself back into the past, into a

place which I would never be now. I would never have a bed like that. I

can't even believe that I lived like that. But it was part of me

and I accept that. I don't have any regrets about anything that I have

done. It was a seminal piece of art that a lot of people recognise and

identify a week, so I'm really pleased with it.

The in terms of technique, I find it very interesting. You had a

recent major retrospective at the Hayward Gallery. There were rooms

in the gallery that you could look through and look at so many

different objects taken from your own life, whether your bathroom or

your bedroom or whatever. There was a sense in which I felt at times

that it was almost going through a Tracey Eni Museum as much as an art

gallery. The subject on display constantly, was you. When I was

young there, I made work that was so close to me, it touched me.

And in the beginning, a lot of people did not see it as being art.

They could not relate to it as art. And still, people have a lot of

difficulty with those works. But for me, it was just me making

something with the reality of the subject. Instead of making a

sculpture of it, I just used the real thing. To do that, it meant

that I had to separate it from my mind. I had to take it out of the

environment and put it into a different space. I had to create it

and say, this is art. I had to defend it and justified it to the

end. Two the day I die, I will still have to have arguments about

taxi driver -- with taxi drivers about the bed. Some people must say,

it is interesting, it is simply not art. But a lot of people don't

understand I spent seven years at art school. I did not go through

all of those things and become this, but nothing.

Is there anything, that through your artistic Rea, you have always

regarded as off-limits? Because so much of your life is out there, in

your art, is there anything that you have not been able to touch.

Lots of things. What? Like other people's lives, for example. When I

was younger, I made a lot of what about my family. But then nobody

knew why was, so it was OK for me to do that. I never had exhibitions,

it was fine. Now I have made of Asians, I censor myself. I would

never make a tent with the names of everybody that I ever slept with. I

can't believe I ever did that. But nobody was interested in what are

was doing, so it was time for me -- fine for me to do with it. I did

not know what it would represent for other people. One more point on

the past before I want to discuss what you are working on now, you

said that you have had to live with people saying, it is not art, for

so long. That does include critics. One of the most senior critics in

the UK, Bryan Steel, I just want to quote you one thing that he wrote

about you, because it may be sums up one field of criticism, he said

- being Tracey Emin, is Tracey Emin's core activity. She barks,

look at me, look at me, all the time. She is like some sort of

fraudulent medieval Margaret relics. She puts on a show these trivial

keepsakes of herself. When you get that sort of savage criticism, how

deep does it could you? Typing that he is a very entertaining writer.

He really does not like contemporary art. I don't know how

much he likes women. He never writes nicely about women, in any

circumstance. He also reduce cars. He is a jack of many traits. I

would not take what he says too seriously. I think there is little

bit of envy. He had a bit of jealousy of my lifestyle. Last year,

he became one of many two women to be appointed professors of drawing

at the Royal Academy. The only woman. The NRA is now a professor

of painting. We are the only professors in the whole history of

the Royal Academy. More than 250 years. Do you think that it is a

very gender unequal Business, the make King of art? Definitely, but

it has changed a lot since the Second World War. One of the big

problems is, when women come to the front lot more, that was in the 70s.

They used lots of throwaway materials that would not stand the

test of time. Because even if they were really great artists, museums

would not buy their work, because it would not survive. Many use

heavy waited materials. But men peak when they are in their 40s.

One big dined peak. And then they usually go down. Women, over 40,

they just keep going on and on and getting better and better and it is

like that with sex. Women keep coming, mangers ejaculate once. And

that is how it is with art. But we don't have much proof of this.

Because men don't like to talk about this subject. It is only in

the last 30 years that women have become art historians, museum

directors and curators. The art world is not just artists, it is

about the whole art world that pushes this forward. When you look

at your career, you have had great success, critical success and

commercial success. Kenya. Two times in your career when you feel

that your gender has worked against you, that it has been a real

problem for you? No, not me. I was quite lucky. When

I first went to art school, I had an interview and they asked me what

I put about feminism, and a set, I don't. I said I don't think about

it, I just get on with a -- with what I have to do. I was on the

panel of a women's forum at the Tate and the subject of children

came up. For a number of women, they stop making work for a number

of years to have their families. It is to do with any career own

profession. A lot of women, they want to be at the top of their

career, for their own personal trajectory and journey, and that is

very difficult if you have to take a family with you. It is

extraordinarily difficult. That leads me to a quote that I was very

struck by. I was reading about the Austrian artist, who does a lot of

painting of human form. She has won a lot of awards. She is now in a

90s and she said this - I do not understand young women who want to

make art and have a big family. She said, don't think it is possible to

This woman was 90. People sit at it's quite a controversial thing

but many women achoo and they include artists but not great

artists. That's the difference. It is not Picasso or and it will all.

They are not kick-ins. Do you think it you had children you would move

had been the Overture was a would not have been an artist I think

Woodstock I would probably be delayed. It was good going to

happen. My life in my creativity is something else and it's about me

inventing things and creating things and being an artist and not

a minute during mother. It's about events and art which exist in the

world. That is what I am good at. Oh No! Again, going back to some of

the trauma you have been through in your life, you had an abortion, he

found that very tough. Is it part of your art that has been about

that since of Rick rate and loss? It was about questioning abortion.

It was not pro-choice all pro-life but about a woman going through

that experience. That really helped a lot of women whether or not a la.

I identified with me. Its members closed subjects. People get up in

the morning and go to work and at an abortion in the afternoon in go

back to what next day without telling anyone because they feel

more of it and push him. If they have a sense of regret her not in a

position to tell them because nobody would be sympathetic. At the

UN what you will feel like until the be a bit? No-one wants to have

an abortion. Choice situation at the time feeling what you have to

do to survive all but Fullwood for what it reason. No-one ever wants

to have an abortion. The at me ask you about money. Its key you have a

brilliant entrepreneurial flair. You have been commercially

successful. Making a lot money, and that's dive all your creativity?

infinitely not. When you had not got the money to pay and gas bill,

or electricity, and you only have enough money for one. I had a very

poor upbringing as a child. I was very called a lot. Ice water and

more are still poor would never be called. What really would stop her

Mini occasions, be cause theories so to hide my work, he wants the

one full eye clinic Collins at, awesome All York-New work I'll to

you about quilts. Before the recession one of the galleries said

he would be a big recession coming. We had in people that would what

you will will and blankets. Start making more blankets balls stop I

was building must use it. I set myself a light rather than make a

blanket. Harvey it off in the opposite direction. I was like

sulking child. On that subject, is it true about that terrible for her

in the warehouse and one or it most famous works which you referred to

about everybody you ever slept with, at got destroyed. Did the owner of

that work or for you are vast amount of money to recreate it?

They was the chance of �1 million to recreate it but I could not

possibly recreate something at me in my small in water them. It took

me six months. It was my idea of all my old clothes and nightdresses.

Could not recreate that. All of that smacks of what you are present

or to us. It's have committed you. It was a unique creation. You set

up shop and went international. I went online. You can buy a big cups,

months, balls, teachers and handbags. You want it in yourself

into a wholly proper will brand. which the little shop did not make

such a big profit. I am fully for people in the shop stop with us at

the wheel full of artistic integrity? It means people can buy

things directly from me and from a studio. I have a good commercial

hit. They were no jobs will money back in the 80s and 90s it was very

difficult. He won the galleries for collectors. Has changed in the last

30 years, it's the normal and fantastic. It does mean again in

Funes all where you have borne in your career, it's a raw Rebel yell

that you unknown full. It's there a bit since then you are woven into

the Establishment. You have commissioned by for Mitchell

Torrance to sketch the Queen to mark Jubilee. I met the Queen here.

I met her twice. It's not about the establishment. I've been around for

20 years and I am not going away and the establishment is growing

with us, it's the symbiotic thing. There is not a war going on. I am

not a social adolescent punks speaking at everybody. I am nearly

50 and I am taking seriously. I'm an artist. I'm respected. I enjoyed

it. There is nothing wrong with that and I will not be cynical

about things in my life, I want the best of every situation. It's not

about the establishment. The Prime Minister is younger than me. Family

enough, he introduced the idea. -- finally enough. You have taken some

flak. Some say you have forgotten where you have come from. You were

very public but voting for David Cameron. You support the

Conservatives. You walk lower taxation. That has robbed a lot of

people up the wrong way. I think they have forgiven me we're all

stop this boroughs those comments, had not got me where I have come

well. I have a brand new gallery only built last year. I am fighting

for there is and what is to happen in every seaside town. The Tory

government as good appreciation of bit parts. But they have cut the

art budget. Also in that user and other artistic endeavours to say

their particular field has been really badly damaged by the Tory

cuts. Labour made some chronic cuts also. None more so than the Tories.

There's no money. It is no money anywhere in the world. We eat up

almost out of time but back tee all work and - you will work, and the

way you admit you. What is next for you? You say that women peak much

later. I have an exhibition in Argentina, on a series, and then in

Rome, -- when a series, New York, Miami, and in a new space and that

takes me up to 2014, I'm very busy. That is what I am doing. You had

written in and neon sign or something right and you said I do

not expect to be a mother but I do expect to do him. I wonder it we're

supposed to win to put that in a bleak way? Knitted way? Is it make

it? It is not negative. Its state of the fact. Not adding up family

puts you in a different position. After media reasonable. What I do