Mark Lawson Talks To; Tracey Emin

'Tracey Emin:
- Provocative British art
- 1999 Turner Prize Nomination; My Bed
- Book; Strangeland
- Part of the YBA (Young British Artists)

In this BBC Four programme, journalist and broadcaster Mark Lawson interviews British artist Tracey Emin, most notably known for her work; My Bed.
The interview reveals Emin's thoughts of politics, art, her personal life and the media.

This candid interview completely changed my opinion of Tracey Emin.
At first I thought she was this wild, crazy, pompous artist, only famous for this mess that she exhibited as a bed.
But during the programme, I became so engrossed in her life and Emin herself, and my opinion completely changed.

Emin says in the interview that she wanted to create art for the people. People in hopsitals, prisons and court houses. This was different from my first opinion of her care-free, flippant attitude towards creating art.
She obtained an MA in painting at the Royal College of Art, and with that came the prejudice of a typical art student.
She then studied philosophy at University of London, after describing her times at RCoA as a negative experience, and also destroying her early paintings.

Emin's most famous piece is her work entitled "My Bed".
The exhibit attracted an array of media fury, particularly over the fact that the bedsheets were stained with body secretions and the floor had items from the artists' room (such as condoms, a pair of knickers with menstrual period stains, other organic matter, and functional, everyday objects, including a pair of slippers).
Emin presented the bed as it had been when she woke one day to find the mess she had been living in, although she does say that she did edit the bed and did not present it just as it was. She says she took care in it and censored some of it.
Emin explains the story behind the bed; saying that she was in a bad place and awoke to find the horror she was living in. She knew she had to change and the way of doing this was to present it as an art form, to show others how she was living.

"I make art that is really personal", she says, and she believes that people felt that they could criticise her for her work, because it was so different from their own lives, and they didn't want to see something so raw and uncensored.

She also spoke of her other exhibit. In 1997, she created 'Everyone I Have Ever Slept With 1963 - 1995', a tent appliquéd with names of the people she had slept with; sexually and non-sexually.

She says she took a lot of care into that tent, making it for personal use, stitching every single stitch in that tent for around 6months. She said that she also practically lived in the tent while creating it.

I found this interview so fulfilling to learn from Emin's experiences and to understand her art now that i have understood her childhood and her life.