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Dame Tracey Emin says the people of her home town of Margate rejected Reform as they ‘are a lot more intelligent and a lot more politically astute than what people imagine’.
Speaking as her new exhibition at London’s Tate Modern opens, the artist says she believes she has helped changed the Kent seaside resort for the better: ‘I’m so proud to be British, but what I don’t like is jingoistic, racist, bigoted behaviour that divides our country. Twice (Nigel) Farage has tried to get into Margate, and it was a joke. He didn’t get in because there’s a lot of people there that are a lot more intelligent and a lot more politically astute than what people imagine.’
The artist, who received a damehood for services to art in 2024, says life is ‘tough’ in Margate, but that in recent years it had boomed with new restaurants, cafés and boutiques opening up. The seaside town also saw the opening of the Turner Contemporary art gallery in 2011.
Dame Tracey continues: ‘There are 18,000 people living below the poverty line and a lot of those people are working, they have jobs. Margate’s a tough place, but I tell you what’s making it better – art. Art is really changing the landscape of it. It sounds boujee, and sort of like gentrification, but all of that is giving young people who work there jobs.’
Dame Tracey, who has helped fund a café which teaches hospitality skills to young people in the town, adds: ‘I’m not just saying something’s got to be done, I’m actually doing it. If more people did something, the country would be better, we’d be in a better place, and then people like Reform wouldn’t have such a big, loud voice, would they? Because people wouldn’t listen to them.’
Dame Tracey also speaks of how not enough people from working-class backgrounds are able to train in art due to hefty tuition fees.
She adds: ‘My big advice is don’t let the fees stop you from going to university. Otherwise it means only wealthy people are being educated and having a higher education, and that’s morally wrong.’
Her show, named A Second Life, is the largest-ever survey exhibition of her work and looks back at her 40-year career with her defining works as well as pieces that have never been exhibited publicly before. A spokesman for the London art gallery says it brings together more than 100 works encompassing painting, video, textile, neon, sculpture and installation, and looks at how Dame Tracey has used the ‘female body as a powerful tool to explore passion, pain, and healing’. It includes works from her first-ever solo exhibition at White Cube in 1993, and two of her best-known installations, Exorcism Of The Last Painting I Ever Made (1996) and My Bed (1998), the latter of which was nominated for the Turner Prize.
Dame Tracey’s quilt The Last of the Gold 2002, which is emblazoned with an ‘A to Z of abortion’ providing advice for women facing a similar situation, will be shown publicly for the first time.
Her more recent bronze sculpture Ascension 2024, which explores her new relationship with her body following major surgery for bladder cancer, is joined by new photographs showing the stoma that she now lives with.
Dame Tracey says: ‘I’m very excited about having a show at Tate Modern. For me, it’s one of the greatest international contemporary art museums in the world and it’s here in London. I feel this show, titled A Second Life, will be a benchmark for me. A moment in my life when I look back and go forward. A true celebration of living.’.
Tracey Emin: A Second Life will run until August 31. Reform UK has been approached for comment.
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