Dame Tracey Emin

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0:57Moto Casino, American Social Casino. Download the Moto Casino app today. We have good news. Ruthie's Table 4 is now a book. Table 4 at the River Cafe, Conversations About Food and Life, is a collection of guests, interviews, photographs from over 240 episodes. We have Paul McCartney, Tina Fey, David Beckham, Mel Brooks, Austin Butler, Sarah Jessica Parker and many, many more telling their stories through the lens of food. Order now, Ruthie's Table 4.com slash book. Ruthie's Table 4, presented by Sky. I was convinced by this point that I was supposed to have died, but someone said, somewhere, let's give her another chance, which there's something good in her, let's just see what happens.

1:54and I feel at the moment, even with my shirt at Tate, I haven't blown it and the second life, I'm really having one and someone said this really good thing, now after my shirt at Tate, I'm going to go into the third It's the third life

2:13My idea of true luxury is to be in a museum looking at art I love I experienced this feeling last night when I was lucky enough to go to the Tate Modern to see A Second Life, the exhibition of the work of Tracy Emin. Tracy says she doesn't think of this show as a retrospective, but for the world, it's a chance to see her work from the beginning to right now. When we started Ruthie's Table 4, Tracy was one of the very first people I asked to join me. That was in 2021, and a lot has happened since then. And that's what we're going to talk about today, about the experience of living with an extreme disease, how it's affected her diet, where she's been, where she's going.

3:00If I was to be asked now what I consider a true luxury, the answer would be being together right now with Tracy Emmett, an artist and a friend who I love. So that's how I felt last night, you know, the incredible experience of being there, nine o 'clock at night with your work. And I started at the beginning, I went very slowly to the end. So how are you feeling about the show? What are you thinking right now? Is it, it's a show like no other, in a place like no other, isn't it? Yeah, usually tape for an opening have about 600 people. Yeah. Maximum was 900 once, and I think there was quite a few thousand.

3:40I think so. Yeah. I know. But, you know, that's joyous. Was it too much for you? Was it like? It was all so fast. It was like, I don't know, usually I get really stressed out in that sort of situation. But I didn't because it was all too quick and too fast. And I wish I could have enjoyed it a bit. I stayed a bit longer and enjoyed it a bit more. Yeah. But everybody else did if you didn't. Yeah, I know. The whole world saw each other and I saw no one. Yeah, I know. But that often happens at your own parties. what I do is I stand sort of like in one place at the door and then I know I've seen everybody and then you know but I think that everybody said it was just incredibly warm and that the dinner the way you had all your people from Margate around you and uh it felt family it was a lot of love in the room I think you know there was it wasn't like a pretentious dinner or anything it was just all the people that had worked on the show and yeah from Margate you know I think everybody the people People I talked to really remarked on that.

4:40I don't like, I find sometimes things that are very incredibly formal. I find it quite difficult sometimes. And especially when you're trapped in a seat. I don't like it. All of this sounds really pretentious. But it happens to people in all walks of life. Like the social situations where they feel uncomfortable or where you maybe don't know what to do in that situation. In the old days when I used to smoke, I always had the best excuse. When you could smoke inside a place, then I'd just blow as much smoke as possible to keep everybody away. And then when you had to go outside and smoke, there was always this excuse to come in, go out, move around or whatever.

5:31And always when I have a show, especially in London, I always talk about the noise. I can hear the people in the museum or the gallery. I can hear what they're saying. I can feel the vibrations. And it's a strange feeling. It's like being shook up or shaken. And part of it is quite exciting and nice. And then another part of it makes me nervous. And two years, was that the right amount of time to get it? Yeah, it was because it's in London. What do you mean? If we were doing that show abroad It would be take because you have to keep flying aboard having meetings coming back They come here you go there, but because it was in London.

6:18It was very it was much easier to do so, but still all the work has to be shipped in from all over the world, you know, and Harry, yeah, what we'd he was the main man. He did it all I for the whole show I only contributed three things. What was that? The title, A Second Life, the colour, the Hague Blue, it isn't Hague Blue, but it's a far and ball, really amazing blue colour. I chose that colour. And the corridor, what I call the corridor, that was the bit that I curated that I did. The experience of seeing that show, walking through it, is very personal. It's like being with you and I walked in last night just walking straight into you dancing.

7:07That film is called Why I Never Became a Dancer. Why I Never Became a Dancer. We just talk about that film. In the beginning, the first part, you hear why I never became a dancer. It's a story about growing up in Margate, having lots of teenage sex, but not with teenage boys, with men, and how it made me feel. And the dancing at the end is about survival. Oh, really? Yeah. And it's quite a sad film, really, but the end is triumphant. And I think when I first made that film, people didn't understand it. They just didn't bother listening. And now it's completely... People totally respond to it and understand it.

7:53Why do you think that? Do you think it's a different generation of people who understand it? Yeah, well, I think now people understand about, you know, from Me Too to grooming to, you know, coercive behaviour, all different things. I'll look at it right now. Yeah. The problem with the Epstein thing right now is that people think that it happens to those people. Right. It doesn't. It happens everywhere. It's through society. It's prevalent everywhere on all different levels. All these files are being released and people are reading them, but there's no justice being done. You know, it's just, we'll give you the files and we'll just put them out there and everybody can judge it.

8:35So we're just getting the news of it. The world is a very different place from when we did our interview last time. How can the world change so radically within five years? That's because it hasn't changed within five years. It's been changing for the last 30 years, 40 years. slowly, bit by bit, without people noticing. Well, we met five years ago, and I agree with you that, you know, and particularly in my world, you know, being an American, being involved in politics, being, you know, how you feel complicit. I think that's, you know, what... There was a great interview with David Remnick, with a journalist or a young person who said, you know, Mr.

9:21Remnick, I can't take the noise. We just imagine that every day there's another thing being done. Every day, you know, we're seeing the injustice and the values and everything that's wrong happening, and it's just too much. So many of us are sort of switching off. And he said, well, switch off if that makes you feel better, but just know that by switching off, you're complicit. Yeah. You're complicit. Exactly. And you're complicit by not saying anything. Yeah. You're complicit by not putting your head above the parapet. you're complicit by that makes you in agreement because you want a quiet life yeah then I thought the show again you are saying something in that show and that comes through and a very brave and a very honest and a very out there way of of your of your illness and you I think what you've done in the show is both being honest to yourself and to everyone else but also inspiring people I think there isn't an inspiration.

10:22I don't know, you start out, you probably didn't start out to say I'm going to inspire people. But I think we all live on the edge of health and illness. When I was at the Royal College of Art, I used to make these very, very big sort of religious paintings. And they weren't religious, it was just that I used to go to the National Gallery about twice a week and do drawings of the paintings, and then do my own versions that had family members or friends in them or whatever. And I was really interested in Byzantine frescoes. that was my thing and edward munch and it was my paintings were like a mixture of both these things and i used to say when i was at college that i didn't this is ironic that i didn't want to just sell paintings to rich people i wanted my paintings to be in hospitals in public places i wanted people to be able to see them i wanted art to make a difference but i didn't realize at that time that You have to go all the long way round to get your work in the museums, into the public places.

11:22You have to be at the top of your game to have your work seen publicly. So now I feel with the show at the Tate that I'm just getting to where, you know, 35, 40, where I've always wanted to be. And it's not being acclaimed, well-known, famous artist, any of that stuff. It's about having your work seen and communicating what you think is important. Having a voice. Some people's, like Matisse, some people's voice is to make beautiful things. To make people feel good about seeing something beautiful. My work isn't about that. You know, you can have some sort of hardcore minimalism and it's sublime.

12:09Yeah. and so you feel that, that's what you feel when you look at it whereas I'm not doing that either. There's many, artists have many rooms, there's many places for artists and I've found my place and I've stuck to it and even when it wasn't popular and even when it wasn't appreciated I've stuck to it and it's gone round into full fruition.

12:45I was thinking that maybe doing a show is a bit like doing a dish, you know, all the ingredients that go into it and the performance. When I do a meal or when I cook something or we do something at the River Cafe, you kind of take a long time to get ready. It takes a lot of choosing, of time, of searching for the right thing. And then it's there, and then it's public exposure, do you find? But then you're talking about memory and emotion as well. Tell me what you mean. So if you cook a really fantastic meal, and I'm not saying if, when you do. I can say if. Yeah, and people eat it. They have this memory of the time, the moment, the taste buds, everything, the warmth, all of that kind of thing.

13:35So when you do an art exhibition, it's different, but people will go and they will look at that image for 10 seconds, 10 minutes, two minutes, half an hour, then it's gone. They go on to the next one, the next one, and it's a memory that they have to take with them of how they felt when they saw it. So it's the same with you. People will have memory of when they ate, when they laughed, what they did. If people put their heart and soul into something, you can tell, you can feel it, you know. Can you remember food that you ate that you still remember? How you felt when you were eating it? You can feel that way with music, you can remember.

14:17Is there a memory of growing up with your father who was a cook. My dad was a brilliant cook. Really, really good cook. Fantastic cook. My dad's cooking was like, it was all really good natural. And my dad was a brilliant gardener, so he'd grow all his own vegetables as well. And especially if I visited him in Cyprus, it was fantastic. And he would cook just lots and lots of Turkish dishes. And just, it was fantastic, yeah. they're all really organic natural foods as well so does it trigger memories from when you when you have some well it is it is now food and then it is now when i'm thinking about my dad yeah definitely so just cook this thing called lady's finger and what was it well it was like um uh asparagus and um asparagus tomatoes um like this sort of just like and beans and everything.

15:18No, it was good. All his cooking was brilliant. So food must figure in the importance of what you do. Food. So this is kind of complicated. Food's always been an issue for me because I don't know if when you first, remember when you first met me, I was very, very thin. And I remember coming to stay with you in Italy and I'm nearly, I was crying because there was too much dinner, you know, whatever it was. I couldn't cope with the amount of food. You had a broken leg, didn't you? Yeah, I just smashed up leg as well. It's like, oh, everything. But for me, I used to only eat when I was hungry. Never ate at all any other time unless I was hungry.

16:00So I could go to the best dinner in the world and I wouldn't eat anything because I wasn't hungry. I'd only eat when I was hungry. So now things have changed. and um and but i've always appreciated good food fine dining and presentation of food that's what i love what do you mean well like i love a beautiful table i like um things to be presented beautifully i like flowers i like i also like simplicity i don't like grandeur and grandiose things but um I think if even if like my mum always even if you haven't got anything you know but you make it you make it look beautiful and you present it well it's going to taste nicer definitely did you grow up so you grew up with that ethos it was that something you discovered later that you it was meal times or presenting food meal times were different in my house because I'm single my mum was single parent and my mum worked as a waitress in the hotel so my mum was never there at mealtimes so it was always it was never we I can remember I can count the times that we sat at a table and ate together you know and at Christmas my mum was always working so our Christmas was a week after Christmas so it for me I suppose I've always been and I think then there was a time in my life when I overcompensated on that you know like I wanted to make Christmas or I wanted to have every Sunday have have a meal or whatever and they went through a stage where every Saturday I went out to lunch to to restaurants because I wanted and I'd invite my friends and I wanted to have this almost like trying to reclaim something yeah exactly ramekate is the right word but and but you actually can't so and now I'm just very um um when you live alone and you eat alone you eat differently from other people who eat together yeah I was thinking you were surrounded by people you know why yeah no no everyone would think that but you can't you can't be surrounded by people if you're an artist I can't anyway I have to have I have to have real clarity moments of being alone and also have to feel lonely before I used to think that was a very negative thing feeling lonely yeah now I realize it's not it's it's solitude and it's a really positive feeling so I'm really looking forward to it now the take things I'm really looking forward to doing this I never usually see the paintings that I want to make because I never know what I'm going to be doing but at the moment I keep seeing the paintings I see see it when I'm doing well I keep falling asleep in places so I've in this house I've got these different color sofas I've got a deep red one I've got a dark green one I have the blue one and yeah and I thought it'd be really nice for me to do instead of just doing my usual figures or whatever I could just think about the color so this is going to be the green David this is going to be the red Fitzroy sofa this is going to be this or whatever and start with the idea of the color with the figure instead of starting from a white canvas a white canvas yeah yeah yeah so and and that feeling that I want to paint is that solitude the art that you actually want to live with that you come down and see in your domestic environment does that how has that chosen there is a strange process so this so that's the painting of me and my mom painting drawing big drawing of me and my mom and when I did that I started doing it this was years ago after she died and I did it it's three o 'clock in the morning and I thought I'm going to do a painting of my just me and my mom's faces and just see and sometimes I have an idea to do something and then And I do it and then I paint over it and then paint something else.

20:09And as I went to draw the line through the middle of the canvas, so I have two sides, I didn't do it central. And then I just carried on drawing. And then within five minutes, I'd drawn this picture of me asleep and my mum's flat, and that's my mum sitting in her chair. And when I finished it, the drawing, I stood back and I cried and cried and cried. That's why this is on the wall here. It's me and my mum. one big mistake I made I lent a painting to Yale for my show at Yale and um oh my god did I regret it because you think you think well I can just hang another painting because I've got enough I can just hang another painting you can't because it's like and I can I totally understand now why lenders and collectors don't want to lend works to music to exhibitions because it's like like you feel bereft when it's gone.

21:03It's like nothing can make up for that space because it's part of your psyche, your life that you live with. And it's nice to have that with your own work. It sounds really conceited. But, you know, I could hang art everywhere in this house, but I don't. It's all chosen. I have a David Dawson gave me a Lucian Freud drawing, which is over there for my birthday a few years ago. Yeah. I've got a Rebecca Warren. So, and I'm not an art collector as such. I live with art. Yeah. I have to have it. I feel something with it. So. I think we, I have, we don't have much, but I think you look at everything, every work that I have and know how I felt when we bought it, given it.

21:53I would say everything has a story. You know, people have a story. The chair has a story, you know. It can be a poster, it can be something your kid made, it can be something that when you look at it, it has. And then when you don't have it, you miss it. Yeah, well, I really like psychometry. What's that? Psychometry is when you feel something from touching objects. So, for example, these chairs are really odd, and you know that lots of people have put their hands on these chairs. So if you really think into it, you could actually imagine or feel those people. Or you touch a table or whatever.

22:28So some people do it with psychometry. Instead of them reading your palm, you say, take your earring off or you give them your keys, and they hold it, and then they... They can feel it? Yeah. No, they talk to you about yourself in a... You're feeling it. Yeah, it's a psychic way.

22:55Let's talk about the illness, because you gave me a list or somebody in your office of what you can and can't eat. Do you want to just talk about that? Yeah, quite. That diet. Let's look, what you can eat. Okay, so there's potatoes. I'll do it fast. Potatoes, white rice, pasta, rice noodles, egg noodles, couscous, eggs, cheese, cream cheese, fish, chicken, minced beef, minced lamb, ham, shrimps, prawns, crab, oysters, fresh to the steak, caviar, white bread, avocados, skinless cucumbers, satsumas, watermelon, papaya, mango, very ripe banana well-cooked carrot well-cooked swede passata sponge cake custard desserts without fruit ice cream cheesecake and sheep's milk yogurt that's what you can eat yeah there's a few other things but that's basically a diet that i have and i actually don't ever eat lamb hardly ever Yeah.

23:46But and so this so when when I was diagnosed with the cancer, I was really kind of focused on how to deal with it. First of all, I had a cancer which is not going to say terminal, but there's no cure for it at all. None. So chemo doesn't work. You can't have radiotherapy. The only thing you can do is have it cut away. And usually when you have it cut away, this part of it is left. And that part of it that is left is already the most aggressive cancer, squamous cell cancer inside me. So people have squamous cell cancer on the outside, but I have it internally. So all you can do is take it away.

24:33And it moves very, very fast. It grows very fast. and I knew that I was given six months to live and unless I had this really drastic traumatic surgery which I had and lo and behold they managed to get rid of catch all the cancer and every time every month I had to have another scan I had to have all tests but every month not every six months every month and then I only cried twice about the cancer but when my bowel stops started to not work so I have a urostomy bag which is for urine because I have my bladder removed so that's hard and tough but one thing I didn't want to do is have a colostomy bag I didn't want to have two bags and so I have stuck to this diet like because what happens is my food doesn't digest properly and because the scar tissue it can't go through into my intestines properly and so I have to have a very low residual diet like baby food really so I can digest it properly you can have meat but it has to be minced really minced so I can't digest the food properly and that is when I got that back is the day I really cried because I was in Thailand and I was rushed to hospital and I nearly died and I was really lucky that I didn't end up having surgery there and everything and they were pretty brutal I was nilled by mouth for about four days and had a tube down and they were taking the drawing the food up from this way it was pretty painful and awful but it's because of the food that I'd eaten on the flight on the plane so now before I fly I'm supposed to go like 24 hours we'd just eat drinking broth I've got yeah flying really mucks it up as well but it's serious a serious thing and there's quite a lot of people who have major surgery for whatever reason and they have part and they end up having to like especially with me if you have part of your bowel cutaway and you have something like divalitolitis or colitis or you you will be afterwards you won't ever eat properly again or how you want to eat and And at the beginning, it was heartbreaking for me.

27:05What did you miss? Fruit, mainly. Fruit, yeah. Well, it says here, berries, seeds, nuts, red meat, large cuts, green vegetables, mushrooms, oats, chickpeas, brown rice, tomatoes or onions. Fat, I can't eat. I can't eat broccoli, Brussels sprouts, cabbage, peas, which seem so harmless, little peas. Yeah, yeah. But I can't eat peas because the skin on the peas, because the skin doesn't. Pomegranate is one of my favorite foods in the whole world. Can you have the juice? You can't have the juice. I suppose I could have, yeah, I can have the juice. Pomegranate juice. Juice is really amazing. We could make you some pomegranate.

27:45Send it over, yeah. Okay, we will. What about alcohol? Do you miss drinking at all? No. No, I stopped drinking. How did you stop drinking before? Yeah, I stopped drinking because I fell in love. and I said, I swore to God that if I fell in love, I'd stop drinking. And so it all came around the same time as the canister. It was kind of weird. Yeah, because I, you know, I was a big white wine drinker and white wine and bladder cancer is like sulfuric acid going inside you. It's not happening. But also it coincided with falling in love. So when you open this beautiful catalogue of Tracy Emin, and it is a beautiful catalogue, a second life you come to this page which is the first page that you read and it says it's about having the ability to change things and do things and in my second life I found that strength to do that that I didn't have in the first life a second life is what I'm going through now and not many people have that chance.

28:53Tell me about this. Well I realized with the cancer that the fact that I didn't die was like pretty incredible. It's like you know people with cancer they know that they've survived something pretty you know horrific and it's incredible that you're still here. but what do you do with that here and all the time when I was in hospital I was thinking like and I cannot explain the amount of pain that I was in because I had so much cut away I had half my vagina cut away and it was all sewn up with barbed wire stitches and stuff like this it wasn't just in there it was like I couldn't move you know it was so painful and um I kept laying there thinking what happens if I die because I didn't know I had to wait five days for the results to come back and find out if they've got the cancer and then also it was lockdown so I couldn't have any visitors and my doctor who's a friend as well was sneaked in and he sat there and gave me this pep talk of like you know it probably won't be good news you know that kind of talk because they weren't expecting it to be and then my main thing when I was laying there waiting for my results for five days was um I don't want to die being a mediocre YBA I don't want to be remembered as being someone that was drunk on tv in the 90s I don't want to there was that I just thought god that's what's going to happen that's what's going to happen to me and there'll be like some sort of obituary with pictures of me with my broken finger and and I was thinking all this stuff it was kind of kind of amusing but on the other hand it wasn't it was like tracy you should have done better than this what what have you been doing with your life what have you done the drinking the smoking the party everything and you know like when when you're at school and they go and they said you know tracy should have been focusing more and tracy shouldn't have been sitting at the back of the class tracy should have been at the front that's what i was thinking i should have been in the front and I should have been working hard and I should have been focused and and I didn't think at that point that I was probably going to survive I didn't think it was and also the the survival rate of even the surgery is only about a year and a half you live afterwards so it's more like they do the surgery just to keep you going a bit longer here I am nearly six six years later and I'm not going anywhere you know I'm totally cancer free too but in that situation laying in bed in the hospital during lockdown with no visitors on my own in absolute agony on lots of morphine as well it was like if I get out of this I've got to do something else but it was all kind of subconscious because I wasn't expecting to get out of it and then Margate everything it just all fell in place the school everything um I bought this house and I was very happy to be living here but my neighbors were renovating so I just ended up spending more and more time in Margate and making that really my life there you know and I realized how wonderful it was to go home how many people in their lifetime go home you don't you might never leave home but going home if you go home it means you've gone full circle so by going doing that full circle I got quite a good perspective on my life and me on what I'd been and how I'd been and I was convinced by this point that I was supposed to have died but someone said somewhere let's give her another chance which there's something good in her let's just see what happens and and i feel i feel at the moment even with my shirt hey i haven't blown it and the second life i'm really having one and someone said this really good thing now after my shirt hey i'm gonna go into the third yeah it's the third life it's the third five years from now we'll be sitting here yeah i'll be thinking what is the third also i think what you're saying in that was that um in literature and and uh theater and drama and movies that talk that you gave to yourself could have been given by somebody else you know how many times have we sat there as you said you know tracy you know yeah teacher you could do better you know i always thought the worst phrase that my parents used to get is ruthie isn't working to her potential but you didn't you didn't get it from somebody else you gave it to yourself yeah i always have this thing this sort of like you know like with self-judgment it's like you shouldn't do something if the person you love the most or impress when we impress the most was in the room so i know when i'm doing something wrong because if i'm doing something wrong i think christ jacy don't stop doing this because you wouldn't do this in front of or so and so or so and so or whatever so let's take god out of equation yeah i always think like someone if i'm being watched right now would i be doing this no i wouldn't stop doing that and it's it's like moral ethical every on every single level i push myself like that but now in my second life i'm much more um harder on myself about it but do you do the reverse do you also say good job tracy you've done well today do you do that yeah i hope you do yeah i do you sure i think as you say we've come you came full circle by going to margate and i think in our conversation we've not come a circle but we've we've gone a few yards from where we were five years ago yeah i mean i'm definitely in a much better place than i was then and even then i was in a much better place than i was five years before when you first met me Yeah.

35:05Well, I don't even remember the good thing, so I never have that. So thank you, Tracy. This has been great. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

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