S3 EP4: Dame Tracey Emin discusses her upbringing, YBA contemporaries, and life-changing cancer diagnosis

0:001, 2, 1, 2. Ready? Mic number 1.

0:07Hello, Louis Theroux here, how are you? Welcome to another episode of my podcast, The Louis Theroux Podcast.

0:20And for this episode I sat down with the legendary British artist Dame Tracey Emin. After a turbulent childhood, some of which we discussed in the chat, trigger warning, it is turbulent in the extreme, she then went to art college and subsequently caught the attention of collector Charles Saatchi, who exhibited her work. Among her key works are Everyone I Have Ever Slept With, 1963 to 1995, a.k.a. The Tent. It's a tent with kind of embroidered names and information inside it. that was exhibited in 1997 another famous work is My Bed 1998 that was a rumpled real bed with sheets and detritus around it, it was Tracy's real bed, so it was kind of making commentary on her life as well as on intimacy and life in general and she's made lots of other paintings and other forms of art, she's worked in numerous media and is highly regarded like extremely collectible and has worked at the very top of the artistic profession for many years.

1:27I'm somewhere between an art buff and not an art buff. Like I go to galleries, but like a lot of people, from time to time I grapple with, like, what is it and what's the difference between, you know, something that's actually interested and kind of challenging and a decontextualised, you know, ready-made piece of art and what is just a bunch of crap, if I can put it that way. Like, you know what I mean? Like, sometimes it feels like a con, but sometimes it feels amazing. And I kind of, I think we explore some of my ambivalence in the conversation. This one was recorded in July 2024. And given Tracy's recent health battles, she was diagnosed with cancer in 2020.

2:09She's now thankfully cancer free. We decided to take the train down to Sunny Margate to meet Tracy in her studio. you will hear seagulls cawing. I think that's about it for ambient noise. Maybe a bit of rumbling of cars. But it meant that I had a little day trip, our very first Louis Theroux on location for the podcast recording. It also meant I got a little walk around the studio beforehand. I saw some of the paintings that form her latest exhibition at White Cube in London. I was guided around by her right-hand man, young Harry. Harry is the keeper of the keys he's sort of the amanuensis is that the term?

2:52he is the aide de camp and throughout the interview I noticed Tracy kind of peeking over at Harry to sort of check in with him because she's unguarded right and she also doesn't want to get into too much hot water so he was kind of flying co-pilot with her a little bit I don't mean that as a critique, like, it just explains why from time to time I reference Harry and I say to her, like, are you looking at Harry? We all need a Harry. There's a couple of Harrys in the room with me right now. A warning, there is strong language in this episode as well as difficult subject matter, including sexual assault.

3:33But first, this.

3:54congratulations on being a dame by the way i mean what does it mean to you um i think that you have these sort of accolades and these things for what you've achieved one's achieved and for me to achieve that really means something because um most people that achieve like a knighthood or a damehood they've had a bit of a head start so i think it's good it's like a good role model because i'm showing that you can leave school at 13 you can speak the way that i do the other day i gave a speech and i swore and i went oh my god no and everyone's going what's I was going, I don't know if I should swear anymore now that I'm a dame.

4:39And someone said to me, Tracy, I think they knew you swore before they made you a dame. So it's that kind of thing. It's for who I am, for what I've done, not for anything I'm going towards. I've done my bit. It's just like saying, well done. Thank you. We should let the listeners know that we've met twice, right? Once we was in 2001 at the Brit Awards. I don't remember that much about the whole event. Do you? Yeah, I remember everything. Go on. You asked me if I wanted to go to the after party. Yeah. We went in a rickshaw underground from one bit of Earl's Court to another. And then we popped up and you tried to get me to meet Eminem.

5:22Did I? Yeah. Come on, you remember that. I really don't. I was in a weird place in February 2001. Yeah, you were at the Brit Awards with me. Well, no, I've just broken up. I come out of a long-term relationship like a couple of months earlier. And so this was me stepping out and trying to embrace the idea of being a celebrity a bit more than I had previously. Even though I'd been on TV for about two or three years. But it's odd, you would think that would make me more, sort of more impressionable and more open to the experience and more kind of curious about what was going on. But all I remember was meeting you, you looked at me and you said, you're Louis.

5:59so you would have seen one or two things I'd done. No I really liked your programs and then this is embarrassing but I think I might have come on with that whole thing of come on modern art what's it all about? You did. Do you remember that? Yeah you did. But I thought you were a nice person and we were having a lot of fun. When we got to the VIP area we wanted to meet Eminem because my name's Emin we thought it was funny Gosh. Because there was that joke going around schools saying if Tracy emin married eminem her name would be i'm not going to sing the muppet song but that song finish the joke go on no i can't i'm really bad at telling jokes eminem eminem

6:42you thought it was funny at the time yeah it's funny right cool and then we went to meet eminem and he was in some sort of hareen tent with all these sort of layers and they were saying he'll I'll be with you soon, I'll be with you soon. We were supposed to stand in this sort of atrium area waiting to be seen, and we could just see these shadowy, murky... We were the next in. But then, from the corner of your eye, you happened to see Donny Osmond. OK, yeah, that I do remember. Yeah, and then we spent about an hour talking to Donny Osmond, and then we forgot about Eminem. We sacked off Eminem for Donny Osmond.

7:17Yeah, we did, and we had a great chat with Donny Osmond, and it was really interesting. and then we said goodbye and that was it until you asked and then you asked me to be on your program or you had asked me and you had a sort of emperor's new clothes idea like slightly piss take so i wouldn't do it right was this 2000 that would have been a year or two later when i was probably doing the when louis met and anyone in the public eye yeah i thought let's have a go and i was really really in the public eye in those days really a lot and there's you know tabloids all kinds of things all the wrong things and you were just going to make it worse for me that's what I thought so I didn't but I liked you and I respected I like the way you made your programs and things I thought you're interesting person but I didn't want to do it because a lot of people had an angle against contemporary art then which I thought was wrong.

8:01Fair enough that's happened quite a few times and in fact you were in quite good company and turning me down for a for a TV profile like there were that was the more normal reaction it was always a surprise when people said yes. It was a bit like, what the hell? Maybe they just saw your TV ratings and didn't know what you actually did, because there's a number of people that do that. So you have press and PR people. I never had a PR person or press person. I was an artist. I never wasn't interested in any of that kind of stuff. We were sort of on a path where we were talking about you and then the years of your celebrity and embracing a kind of tabloid lifestyle and being a fixture.

8:37I didn't embrace it. It happened. Why did it happen? What was that all about? Were you drinking a lot at that time? And smoking 60 a day? 50. Only 50? Only 50. Enough to give me bladder cancer, yeah. But I... Were you enjoying it, though? Mm-mm. When I look back, no, of course I was. Were you in a relationship? Yeah, I was in a relationship for about six and a half years. With Matt Collishaw? Yeah. He's another artist of a similar generation. I don't know if you like the term YBA, Young British Artist, but that's a label that was attached to you and to him as well, I believe. It was attached to a lot of people and it was attached yet again by the press and the media.

9:17And also you had the cool Britannia thing. You had like one thing that was amazing was British culture at that time. So that mustn't be knocked. It was pretty phenomenal what was happening. It was like wave, fashion, music, art, everything. And Britain was on a world stage for that. And that I feel really good about. But it's like you wake up one day and you realise that you were doing the wrong thing. I don't mean my relationship with Matt I mean my relationship with myself you wake up and you look in the mirror and you go that's not me what have I been doing and so constantly I was looking and looking and seeing it but not being able to change it not having the strength to change it and just running with it and there were aspects seeing it but what were you seeing I think when you're younger you tend to like take things for granted play with things take things for granted I always use this analogy, like instead of sitting at the front of the class swatting, being really focused, I was just sitting at the back of the class mucking around with everybody else.

10:18But that was part of your gift, wasn't it? Because when I think back, obviously when I've been talking to people about interviewing you, what comes up more than anything? Well, at least as much as anything is the 1999 TV appearance, right? In which you were drunk on TV, seemingly not aware that you were on TV. No, I thought I was around someone's house. You thought you were at someone's house. I think you were around a bunch of men. I don't know who they were. They looked like Roger Scruton, the philosopher might be one of them. There was very eminent male art critics. Art critics? Yeah. It was called Is Painting Dead?

10:52Yeah. You'd just done your tent, is that right? No, I hadn't. This was in 1997 and the tent was in 1995. Right. And I was like, you know, just an artist. some part of me knew exactly what was going on the big part the big tracy knew what was going on little tracy had no fucking idea and the next morning when i woke up i had no memory of it and it was like it was like something out of a kafka play it was like unbelievable because i went to greasy spoon kaf to have like a two o 'clock sort of hangover breakfast with matt and opened up guardian and boom i was on the page two or three of the guardian and then saw all the other newspapers on the front page and things like this you know having a drunk woman on television in 1987 1997 sorry was quite radical and that I walked when I walked down the street you had people give me a thumbs up saying all right Trace kind of thing like oh yeah and then you had these other people in the establishment just going you know that's it door closed forever because you can't you know as a professional anything anybody you're not supposed to be drunk on tv regardless whether you're talking about is painting dead or or nuclear science or whatever your subject is don't be drunk on television talking about it and I wouldn't have gone on television had somebody just someone had gone oh my god Trace is really drunk this isn't good and that was it the dive was cots you know I was then in that arena that was very hard for me to get out of.

12:32Can I push back slightly and you probably disagree but it's also the case that's all anyone remembers from that tv show that and that you came across as funny and raw and unfiltered which isn't to say that the program makers didn't have a duty of care but in a kind of by a certain metric you kind of did a gangster move by um being so relatable right and being kind of uninhibited and there's a part of your art that feels as though it's it's reflecting on someone who's been through experiences that are torrid and extreme and in some ways traumatizing and that it feels true that the appearance on tv feels true to that in some way and that whatever happened may it's interesting to hear you say that you doors were closed because i think a lot of doors were open or at least maybe it was unhelpful but that you became as you said headline yeah i know i mean to the people in the street and people who never go to art exhibitions they suddenly realized that i was this artist that did this thing and that was interesting in the fact of opening up the subject of art for everybody that definitely worked you know i was getting letters from people in prison i was getting letters from single mums from women that had abortions from all kinds of people saying oh wow you know I like the way you tell your story I've never been to an art exhibition before all things like that so from that point of view yeah it wasn't so negative but for me how it affected me was very negative it was something I then had a level of resistance all around me that I then had to smash through or get through and there's been constant things like that in my life that I've had to deal with that haven't made being an artist necessarily easy wasn't but then I'm not a mediocre person so I don't expect to have a mediocre life there you go we were going to talk about the second time we met um at Buckingham Palace I feel weird even saying that sentence I've never been invited to Buckingham Palace before I'd never met the king so for me it was like okay this is a one-off uh i arrived there's about 5 000 people there right maybe not then we felt like 3 000 3 000 so it was mainly people it was it was like a reward for people who work in invisible positions in the arts industries right local librarians and small theater groups anyway that being the case i was next to you we we shook hands with the king right he didn't shake 3 000 people's hands but he definitely shook a lot of hands didn't he no he He didn't.

15:04Didn't he? No. Go on. No. First of all, you were number four, Hans. Yeah. One, two, three, four. I was five. We were the only civilians. And then after that, the next lot of people were military. Were they? So you were right up there with the king and the queen in their pink outfits. They were wearing pink? Yeah, they were. and it was nice and it was pleasant and it was fun and it was smiley and jokey and not heavy. No, it was. No, I agree with all of that. What did you... I didn't have the impression he knew who I was. There, I've said it. But that's fine. Why should he? He's got other things to think about.

15:51He did know who you were. I think he knew who you were. He was almost like, yes, Tracy, it's wonderful to see you. It's such a pleasure. You're looking very well. There is everything. And didn't he? He did, yeah. There was recognition there. Yeah. But he also gave you some recognition, which you... Camilla did, the Queen. She was definitely... She'd seen a couple of programmes. I don't mean to make it... I make it sound like I only tune into people who've seen my programmes. Would you consider yourself a royalist? Would you consider yourself a royalist? Not really. you look very happy shaking king charles's hand the other day how dare you that's embarrassing i like all the pomp and ceremony of the royal family a lot i love it i think britain britain at the moment definitely doesn't do many things well that we're always going to be number one in so i think rather than lose something we're really good at why don't we embrace it and find the right position for it and use it and keep it and and enjoy it because it's quite splendid it's quite amazing it's quite quite brilliant and also i would never ever ever want or wish to be part of a royal family when you see what they have to do and how they live and how restricted their lives are i think it's like a kind of living hell there's something in that like you think about prince william and prince harry they've never really been given a choice and even the choice of turning your back on it is endlessly interrogated like prince harry gets lampooned for saying actually i don't want to be part of this and yeah but also you can have very strong big families regardless of what their class their backgrounds whatever there's a whole family loyalty thing that works within like a firm within like you know a tribe or such like a lot of people will have to go to sunday dinner with their mom and their dad for the rest of their lives regardless of what they're doing.

17:48But, you know, think about these people who say, oh, I'm not going to put my kids on Instagram because that's not really their choice. And if they get old and they want to do that, that's fine, that's up to them. But let them have their childhood in privacy, right? Whereas you think about it, these are people who, as babies, as children, their every move was photographed. They never got to decide whether that was something they were comfortable with or not. So now you're defending them? No, it's the opposite. I'm saying, actually, I think they should be able to exist as private citizens, right?

18:18In other words, I think there's a kind of inbuilt cruelty to the idea of the royal family in the way that it's structured. No, I think that... Does that make sense? No, but I also think that the way that this country is governed and the way that people's attitudes are, I think there isn't much... How can there be any empathy for the royal family? It's quite difficult because their lives are so a million miles removed from most other people's. But that's the same for people who are living in dire poverty as well. Most of the middle class in Britain who are very comfortable could not possibly understand what it's like to queue up to go to a food bank.

18:56That's true. But they could do it privately. Anyway, you know what, I think that's fine. I feel like I've come out as a rampant, weird, anti-royalist and on a strange kind of, we have to protect them from themselves angle. It's not where I'm trying to go with this conversation. It was a special occasion and it did feel... No, but the main thing is it was a really strange place for us to meet. That's the real crux of this conversation. All those other things are attached to the fact that we, after 23 years or 25 years, whatever it is, the next time we meet is Buckingham Palace garden. And that's quite amusing and quite strange and quite...

19:30And to meet the king as well. Just to say the king. What did you do today? Oh, I was at Buckingham Palace to meet the king. It feels like something from a nursery rhyme. You had your bag with you, right? and I since learned what might have been in the bag. Can we talk about that? Yeah. What was in your bag? Because you sort of opened it, but I didn't really look inside. I don't think I showed it to you. You kind of indicated it. No, I had a Victoria Beckham pool string bag, and inside that I had my night bag, which is full of urine. Yeah. Can we talk about your cancer diagnosis? I know it was obviously, as it would be for anyone, it was a big deal.

20:11It was in 2020. It came about in an interesting way. You were in a new relationship. You'd been, what's the best way, you'd been chased for a... I was romantically involved with someone and sort of falling deeply in love. Kenny Schachter. Should I not mention him? Whatever. Doesn't matter. It's fine. It's like, and I didn't, I had been single for 10 years. I'd had the menopause and I thought, if I was to be involved in a physical relationship I need to know that I'm well so I went to the gynecologist to find out that I wasn't well at all that I actually had full-blown squalm cell cancer in my bladder and just one thing led to another it just got worse and worse and then within four weeks or whatever I was having radical surgery and I'm lucky to be alive the operation I had is like a last chance saloon and very few people survive it or live for more than five years afterwards I've lived for four years now so it's it's getting better and I'm determined to live and and my thing when I thought I was I was given like possibly six months to live and at that point I just thought oh Christ what am I going to do and I just thought well I'm going to die so I'll just focus on the living and by focusing on living for the first time in my life I felt happy.

21:40I felt relieved and happy. And I just thought, wow, today's nice. This is good. That's positive. This is lovely. I was getting iller and iller as the time went on. I mean, by the time I had my surgery, I couldn't walk or anything. I was really thin. And that's the other thing. It's amazing that you actually survived the surgery because there's so much. You have so much removed. And yeah, it was life changing. And also to have a urostomy, people mix it up with a colostomy so it's not a poo bag it's a wee bag and the wee comes out all the time constantly and the reason why I can sit here now without my night bag is because I haven't drank hardly anything today and the reason why I had to have my night bag plugged in on my shopping bag when we met the king is because these things take time and you don't know how long it's going to take for them to come down the stairs this or that and the last thing I want to do is be standing in there ready to meet the king and queen and then have to beforehand rush to the loo or my bag burst that would be really embarrassing yeah yeah what would that that would it's not worth thinking spraying wee all over the king that's like an Irvine Welsh situation um how amazing so the six-month prognosis was if you didn't get any surgery or that was no if I didn't get the surgery that was it and the surgery is quiet I mean I had my bladder removed part of my intestines my full hysterectomy urethra half my vagina my lymph nodes yeah they were going to remove my clitoris the last thing I said before I went down he goes is there anything you want to say before we put you and I said please don't if you don't have to don't take away my clitoris and then he woke me up and he said I've got some good news everything else has gone apart yeah so you know some people have bladder cancer when it's caught really early it's just like fishing a tiny pea out of the bladder and and it's amazing because the bladders contain the cancer and if it's a tumour they can just take it out but the kind of cancer I had was attached to my wall of my bladder and it's squalmous cell cancer so it's more like little beads of water sort of so you can't you can't contain it the only way you can get rid of it is by cutting it away chemo doesn't work that kind of thing so that's why most people die because they take it all away and then there's a tiny little bit left and then it just starts up again and you think it was related to the smoking yeah definitely because i smoke so much and and i didn't affect my lungs and so what happens is the carbon dioxide becomes liquefied and goes down into the bladder and it usually comes on about 20 years after you've given up smoking like when you found out about the cancer who did you call what did the rest of the day look like was it in london yeah it was interesting because it was during lockdown so there was like no one about so it was all kind of quite desolate and i just bought a new house and i walked to my new house let myself in it was being renovated and I sat on the steps and it's the only cried twice about the cancer and one one of these sort of like tears came down my face I thought fucking hell I'm probably never going to live in this house and then I thought this house is my dream house I'm going to live in this house I'm going to live in this house and that was it that's the only time I cried and then I went back to my studio and I was going to drive to Margate that day and it was about three in the afternoon and I went to the fridge and I opened up a bottle of champagne and I poured a glass of champagne and I sat this is a truth sat looking at a painting sort of red abstract painting with this sort of black sort of weird thing in it and I was spending ages and ages looking at it thinking what what is that what am I going to do with that what is that and then I was sipping this glass of champagne I suddenly thought oh you stupid cow I can't drive down to Margate now because I drank the glass of champagne so I thought oh I'll just like either sit it out or have another one and then you know when the phone rings and it makes you jump the phone rang and I jumped like this and I saw it was the gynecologist and I said hello and she said oh are you with anyone I said no and she said are you sitting down I said it's not good news is it she said no I said your doctor's going to call you straight after me and that was it and that was on the Thursday and on the Monday I was in the hospital and the following two weeks I was having surgery and then the following four weeks I had forced surgery it's fast and the thing that saved my life was that it was lockdown so there wasn't many people going for tests or doctors or anything people didn't want to go out you know and I I did it and then the other thing was that um i said yes to everything to the full surgery because if i hadn't they would have taken away my bladder and then maybe then something else then something else but i did the whole thing it saved my life uh forgive me if this is intrusive so post menopause um you found you had no sex drive no he can't talk to me about things like that why don't we talk about art all right fine but your art is also about sexuality isn't it yeah some of it It's about love as well.

26:59Yeah, and at my life stage, I'm 50, just turned 54, the idea of sex drive and the extent to which, you know, you're with a part of a 10, 15, 20, 25 years and how you manage a relationship in which sex is no longer... Yeah, well, I think a lot of people, when they reach our age kind of thing, have that situation or that problem. It's not just about libido. it's it's also health being tired knowing what's coming just loving someone wanting to get on with work being that there's all those kind of issues that people go through but also people fall out of love and they they're just trapped with people and they can't admit that they want to break away so there's that kind of thing too or people just say this is the status quo this is my life but I've never done that done what never had a relationship with someone for 15 20 years I've never been married I've never never had children I've never none of those things but you've been in love yeah I've been in love a few times and I think you've said that you love too much I love too much but you love too much yeah yeah especially when I was younger and I think that's also why I spent 10 years on my own because I didn't want to be in that situation again where I feel bereft all time or feel um you know it's got lots it's to do with my personality and my intellect and all the lack of it or whatever it's just that i'm kind of um loving person and i believe what people say so i can fall hook line and sinker you know in love do you think you are an easy person to be in a relationship with?

28:41Depends what you want in a relationship. If you want me to be at home every night cooking dinner and having children or doing the school run, absolutely not. Forget it, it's never going to happen. If you want me to be a woman that was a driving force, loved passionately what they did more than anything else in the world, loved cats more than children then yeah great person to have a relationship with i'm different from other people because i'm singular in lots of ways i like my own company and also i'm a workaholic so that's not always easy for some people especially some men they they first of all they love it they think it's attractive then afterwards they don't because they want it to be more about them no it just might be sadly just be a primal thing men just want to be out there doing the hunting and doing the stuff and expect something from me but what they want not what i want necessarily i mean i'm quite a hardcore feminist and that's how i live at the end of the day i'm totally independent financially independent i'm singularly minded and i've been looking after myself for a long time since I was 15.

30:01We have a friend it's sort of in common in Joan Collins right Dame Joan and Joan is also I think she sometimes embraces the term feminist but she also says men need to be tough she would like to see national service brought back she doesn't like the term toxic masculinity and she thinks me too is is has gone too far I'm summarizing a bit and I wonder if that resonates any of that resonates with you no one of my favorite things that Joan ever said was that being born beautiful is like being born rich and becoming poorer and poorer every day you know Joan is an incredibly beautiful woman and she's really funny really funny but Joan also it comes from another time another era another generation she has a different way of looking at things from me entirely but it doesn't mean to say that we don't get on on lots of other reasons she's very very funny but what about things like because your art is so uncompromising and powerful and you know makes reference to sexual assault and abortion and really difficult challenging issues i wonder whether where you stand on the whole issue of trigger warnings so if i said yeah we love your art tracy but we want to put a trigger warning over the gallery entrance.

31:23No, usually there is. There's always a thing saying that under-16s or something like this, or like with my abortion film, there was a warning simply because eight people, I think, passed out watching it. You know, strong stuff up. It really does work. It makes people think it changes lives. We'd like you to tone it down, Tracy. We love it. We think it's a little strong. We'd like you to tone it down. There are a couple of pieces we're not comfortable with. and then you say no it's never going to happen it's never going to happen if you could replace the word fuck with something like copulate would that be okay certainly no it doesn't happen it's about respect someone wants me to show and show my art that's it that's what they get but there are there are the odd occasion where you have to be a little bit more i'd say discreet but it's not about changing the work or changing the meaning of the work or whatever that's impossible because this is what I do but the point that you could be making is that when I was younger what I did and what I stood for was unacceptable in a lot of places people saw it as being shocking or brash or whatever without understanding the subtext and the whole whole giant conversation of it all.

32:37Is there a piece of yours that was ever protested or that you feel was misunderstood in any way? Yeah, a lot of my work. Go on. Well, the tent, because the tent, people thought it was like who I shacked. Because it was called? Everyone I've ever slept with from 1963 to 1995. Ambiguous. Yes, sleep, as in sexually and also physically sleep. So it was about a level of intimacy. intimacy so there were some cartoons at the time like a sort of like a teepee tent with like George Pete John you know like these crude names or whatever but it wasn't about that at all the tent was all about intimacy the idea of the tent was that people would go in read about who I'd slept with and then they'd come out and think about who they'd slept with and I said at the time when I sewed that tent it was like carving carving tombstones sometimes all the memories and everything that it brought back because it wasn't all very nice it wasn't all very good wasn't all positive and like being raped at 13 is pretty negative being sexually abused as a child is really negative living with those thoughts remembering those thoughts trying to hone in on them and work it out is is not necessarily a good thing or a bad thing and I think they're the trigger of things that you could be talking about those things really matter but for me it was important to investigate that world for me and and find out more about myself and I did that through my art and I still do it through my art now in a much more subconscious way which I enjoy a lot more I've got to say I think when I was young it was very I'm going to make work about abortion I'm going to make work about being raped I'm going to make work about this I'm going to make work about that so in a way I've kind of illustrated the fear or the thoughts that I had whereas now they just come out kind of magically or whatever I don't really know when I'm painting and that's why I love painting because it's much freer medium for me to subconsciously get involved in because never really know what's going to happen or take place.

34:47With a tent what did you how did you make reference to the attackers because you wouldn't have known there were two there's a few incidents that you in your book and one is is it two men who kind of they're just strangers and they opportunistically grab you right in Margate right age 13 do I have that no I was older I was actually was sort of 14 14 yeah but you wouldn't have known their names right yeah I did know their names you knew who their names were on the tent everybody's name's on the tent but not necessarily next to the anecdote or the story that fits it because I didn't want to be accusational with the tent I didn't do anything about it at the time now I do things about it now I talk about it now I reach out about it now I tell people to talk about it I tell people to tell the names I tell people I make it an open subject not a taboo subject an open subject it's like abortion I make it an open subject to talk about you do not have to suffer on your own having an abortion you don't have to feel guilty you don't have to feel ashamed it's something you have to go through no woman wants to go for an abortion and it's like the chance of being sexually assaulted and being able to get something done about it is pretty slim so how do you deal with this situation in real life how do you carry on how do you not let it happen again how do you defend yourself or how do you not enter into the world like a nervous wreck every time someone touches your arm or something you know there's lots of things in my work which touch people's lives it's not just about making art i'm not just making a beautiful object i'm making something which affects me that affected me and it actually transfers to other people's lives as well it opens up discussion the um the tent got incinerated didn't it in the big fire that that destroyed a lot of the saatchi collection yeah and you never reproduced it?

36:45No. If I'd have remade the tent, I call it a facsimile of a real piece of art, I would have got paid a million pounds at the time and that was in 2004 and that's what the insurance would have covered and I said no because the tent to me was real. It was a real thing that I really made that I sat in and sewed and thought about. It wasn't like just a decorative object that could be replaced. It wasn't like that for me.

37:36Can I ask you about your contemporaries? Or is that going to annoy you? So you're often grouped in with the other big name of the YBA generation, Damien Hirst. Thoughts? I'm going to look over to Harry now. What's Harry doing? Winking at me, smiling, winking at me. So, okay, I think it's really hard to be an artist. I think it's really difficult. I think people who don't make art or don't attempt to be an artist don't understand how difficult it is to have that conviction, that self-belief and everything. Damien was a young artist that started off with a lot of that belief and a lot of that conviction.

38:17He was like a force, and now he's not. But every artist has a way of those. But you mean you don't think his art's interesting anymore? Because one of the things about art that's kind of intriguing and like so much contemporary art, some of it's opaque. Actually, I think a lot of your art's quite relatable. It's accessible, right? You can understand there's a narrative behind a lot of it. And it's representational. If it isn't, it's conceptual in a way that you can understand. You can understand a tent that's representing aspects of your intimate life and in an ambiguous way paying tribute to difficult and wonderful experiences.

38:48Or the bed, it's right there. There's a story there. And the story is someone's life. At least at first glance, it feels almost like it has a documentary quality. And like as a documentary maker myself, I feel as though I'm getting an insight into someone's life. and we can study and we can look at it. It's not difficult to kind of under... Now when you see the bed, it's like stepping back into time because there's all these things, like there's a newspaper, a full-scab Guardian newspaper. There's things that you just don't have anymore in 2024. What else is there? There's some used condoms, is there?

39:26Yes, there is some used condoms. There's many things. There's my slippers, there's pill packets. Like what sort of contraceptive pill is it? There's all kinds of things. Is there a bottle of wine or something? It's vodka. I never drink spirits then. So who'd been drinking the spirits? Matt had been drinking spirits. So it was a bed that you'd shared with Matt. So there might be Matt's DNA on some of the condoms. Sure there is. That's handy. If in the future they want to clone Matt and create like a theme park, it could be like Jurassic Park, the YVA edition. I think you... They could have YVAs roaming around in a theme park.

40:03No, no, no. no no harry will you write that down that's my concept i'm trying to see i wouldn't do an interview with you before because i didn't want you to let yourself down talking about art yeah making a big joke out of it all okay here you go no come on that was a joke no no 20 years later you're letting yourself down so but this was me actually saying that i think your art is accessible and i feel as though um like i enjoy and i get references and now i'm going to try and prove my credentials i get I get a little bit of Munch, Edvard Munch, the Norwegian expressionist, and I get a little bacon in some of the colour choices, especially the newer stuff.

40:40In the same way, in a lot of bacon, you get almost sadomasochistic, the suggestions of either sex or wrestling hinted at, and then it comes suddenly into focus in one part of the canvas, and then the rest might almost be like a colour field painting, like a Rothko. But in yours, I see a little symbol like that. it's paying tribute to experiences that are tender and violent and everything in between. Did it sound like I was... That was very, very good. Was that all right? It was totally good, yeah. Every single reference as well was a good one. I like all of those artists. But we were talking, but just to forget, but on Hearst, he still commands huge prices.