50 TRACEY EMIN 藝術家專訪 TAKING TEA WITH TRACEY Once the enfant terrible of British art, Tracey Emin reflects on more than 20 years disrupting the art world as she launches a new show in strangely funny Hong Kong Tracey Emin 20 INTERVIEW CATHY ADAMS PORTRAITS TINA HILLIER Tracey Emin s studio is on Tenter Ground in East London, in the labyrinthine streets behind Old Spitalfields Market. It s spread across three floors: on the ground, half-finished canvasses and pencil drawings; on the middle floor, rows of books on dark bookshelves; at the top, a long kitchen table where I imagine the once-wild-child-now-established British artist hangs out with her aged cat, Docket. Of course there s a cat. He s getting on a bit, she says. He s just started doing these things that he used to do when he was a kitten. He s kind of regressed. Unlike Emin. Tracey Emin Tenter Ground Old Spitalfields Market Docket Emin xxxxxxxxx DISCOVERY MARCH 2016
藝術家專訪 TRACEY EMIN 51 It s in times of passion. If I m feeling dead or dull, the last thing I can make is art. I have to be feeling something, like feeling madly in love or really angry but just be really passionate, hot or fired up. That s when I can be creative.
52 TRACEY EMIN 藝術家專訪 The 52-year-old, made famous by My Bed her fetid sleeping place surrounded by underwear, condoms and, more routinely, her slippers was formerly the enfant terrible of the London arts scene, now laden with several important initials (CBE, RA) after her name and about to open her first Greater China exhibition, I Cried Because I Love You, at Hong Kong s Lehmann Maupin and White Cube galleries. Sitting on the top floor of her studio on an unusually warm London winter s day a true Brit, the first thing Emin talks about is the weather she is warm, acerbic and isn t bothered when I say I peeked at the contents of her shopping basket years ago as I stood behind her in a supermarket check-out queue. Eighteen years since My Bed, you re less likely to find Emin falling out of London s noisy bars I hang out in Mayfair sometimes and I come scuttling back. Scuttling, scuttling, scuttling but rather working on her new material, a departure from the Tracey of old. Her new work is going back to basics: pencil drawings, embroidery, bronze sculpture and neon. This month is not Emin s first trip out East. When I first came to Hong Kong, I was so disappointed, she says. But I had a really fantastic time and laughed a lot. Each time I ve come to Hong Kong, I ve laughed a lot. It s a strangely funny place. (That s probably because she had her fortune sticks read at a temple with local cultural impresario David Tang. It said she d be lonely and unhappy for a very long time, at which point she was rushed to another temple to burn loads of incense to get cleansed.) As her Hong Kong exhibition debuts, Emin curates her five favourite pieces in Discovery s version of Tracey Emin s Unofficial Greatest Hits. Maybe people realise that to read something that stirs you up is actually quite healthy. STRANGELAND, 2005 That s me on the cover I was 14. My lips are really big because the day before I d done a backwards somersault on the trampoline and banged my lips so I had a fat lip. I thought this looks good. Strangeland [her autobiography] is open. It s so transparent. Some of it is like story form, or dream form, and some of it is a stream of consciousness. Some of it is a straightforward diary. There are things in that book that should never have been written. It s like someone reading your most intimate secrets. You don t usually open a book and expect to read that. The written language is different to a picture. A picture is silent. A picture shows the emotions that the viewer puts onto it, but a book is the voice telling you. Strangeland is very, very visual, and it s quite trippy as well. A lot of it takes place in Turkey, and a lot of it comes from my memories as a child. There are parts that are totally made up, where I imagine my future. Some of it is really stupid. The parts that are most mature, that are really interesting, are when I was really young. When I m older and established, I m still behaving very young. It s like I suddenly start to come alive and have fun. The HK$28 million bed Emin s My Bed (above) was a controversial nominee for the 1999 Turner Prize but it changed her life. The artist published her autobiography Strangeland in 2005 EminMy Bed 1999 藝術 Turner Prize 2005 Strangeland My art is very internal. It s not a reflection of external things. MY BED, 1998 My Bed is iconic. My Bed sprung me into art history. It did exactly what I said it was doing at the time: it saved my life. It has elevated me and my art status beyond anyone s imagination. When I think about the situation I was in with that bed in 1998, to how it was at the moment when it was sold at Christie s for 2.54 million (HK$28.2 million) in 2014 with everybody applauding, it s like a surreal dream. Understanding that process should give people hope, from being on the verge of death to being on the verge of beyond your own life. It transformed my life. It s an icon and it s part of art history now. When you go to see it at the Tate Britain, it looks very sweet. The public love it. When people look at it now they don t see it in a disgusting way. It s a time capsule. There are bottles of vodka; I don t drink spirits anymore. There s The Guardian newspaper; I don t read The Guardian that much anymore. There are all these things that have changed in history for me. Photos. My Bed: Rob Stothard/Getty Images DISCOVERY MARCH 2016
藝術家專訪 TRACEY EMIN 53 52 Emin My Bed CBE RA I Cried Because I Love You My Bed 18 Emin Mayfair Tracey Emin EminDiscovery 2005 STRANGELAND 14 Strangeland Emin Strangeland 1998 MY BED My Bed 1998 2014 254 2,820 My Bed My Bed
54 TRACEY EMIN 藝術家專訪 Emotionally, the bed and the tent make absolute sense with my paintings, with my writing. It s all me. It all rolls into one big thing. EVERYONE I HAVE EVER SLEPT WITH 1963 1995, 1995 My tent was a little igloo tent and inside, appliquéd on the walls, were the names of everybody I d ever slept with. There were 102 names and 32 of them I d had sex with. There were all these moments of intimacy. My point was that you don t sleep with people you don t know. If you re on a plane and you re in a middle seat in economy and you go to sleep, you won t touch the people next to you. In fact, you probably won t even go to sleep. If you know the person, you ll lean into each other. That s what it s about. Sleep is an intimate act, completely. There were the names and then there were these corresponding little stories, but they weren t next to the names. It wasn t a trailblazing sex catalogue. It was about the intimate moment of sleep. You crawled into the tent and sat in there and read. I m going back to the real raw basics of what I know. BRONZES I never thought I was really going to learn something new again. To learn a lostwax process and how to make bronzes is brilliant I ve gone from tiny 10-centimetre figures to two-metre figures. I ve learnt to do that in the past four years. It s like my drawing. I m using my hands, but it s this fantastic kneading process. With the bronzes, it s a really slow process and there s no immediacy. When I ve got the clay, I m touching it and doing it. I respond to it. The bronzes are like a threedimensional version of my drawings, so I get a real excitement from it. With my bigger figures you can see all my thumbprints in them and all my hand marks. I love being tactile. I like touching things and I like being in control of what I do. I ll have to wait because I want them to be perfect a lot of people don t use their hands any more to work. NEONS I ve been making neons now for 21 years. They re my signature piece. The difference with me is that I grew up with neon. I grew up in Margate, in Kent, southeastern England, so I grew up with neon everywhere. My handwriting is extraordinary because I left school when I was really young, and I still write in italic. I still have this script writing. I don t write like other people. If it s a day when my handwriting is bad, I won t make the neon: it s not going to be good. See I Cried Because I Love You at Lehmann Maupin and White Cube galleries in Central from 21 March until 21 May 1995 EVERYONE I HAVE EVER SLEPT WITH 1963 1995 10232 10 21 Margate I Cried Because I Love You 3 21 5 21 DISCOVERY MARCH 2016
藝術家專訪 TRACEY EMIN 55 Media mogul Emin s art includes installations (Everyone I Have Ever Slept With 1963-1995, above), neon (which has even adorned Hong Kong s Peninsula hotel, right) and more recently bronze works (inset) Photos. Everyone I Have Ever Slept With 1963-1995: White Cube/RS/Camera Press/IC Emin 藝術 藝術 Everyone I Have Ever Slept With 1963-1995