A new perspective as Emin stands up for Tory arts cuts
By Jack Malvern
Tracey Emin showed yesterday that she still has the power to shock, not by creating another provocative artwork stained with bodily fluids but with an endorsement of Conservative arts policy. The artist has a long pedigree of upsetting traditionalists through conceptual art but, in a strange reversal, she has decided to defy conceptual artists by praising the Tory party. Despite cuts of almost 30 per cent to the Arts
Council England budget and a 25 per cent cut to Department for Culture funding over the next four years. Emin said yesterday that she approved of Conservative policy.
"I voted Conservative because I thought we'd get a better deal for the arts, and I think we have," she said yesterday at the opening of a retrospective of her work at the Hayward Gallery at the Southbank Centre in London. "The country's more 01' less bankrupt. Arts is going to be on the bottom of the list for everyone's agenda, except the Tory party have an amazing Arts Minister now, Ed Vaizey, who's particularly defensive and protective of the arts."
Her enthusiasm for the Conservative Party is rare among altists, who tend to dislike the Tories as an article of faith. It also appears to contradict an open letter that she signed, along with 100 other artists, deploring a 25 per cent cut to alts funding. The letter, sent last October to Jeremy Hunt, the Culture Secretary, stated that the cut would "sabotage Britain's unparalleled achievements". It had no effect.
Emin has previously said that she voted Conservative, which prompted a venomous response from Dinos Chapman, a fellow Brit Artist, but this is the first time that she has defended the cuts.
She said that Mr. Hunt and Mr. Vaizey had sought her opinion on arts funding before the cuts were announced. She has also met David Cameron on several occasions, including a dinner at Downing Street when she was invited to create a neon work to hang on one of the walls.
She said that the cuts to arts budgets were not as bad as many had feared. "For example, I spoke to Gregor Muir, director of the Institute of Contemporary Arts. They had a 40 per cent cut, which is massive, but Gregor thought it was great because he thought it they were going to be closed down. The arts is not the welfare state. We don't want people to feel sorry for us. We can get up and do stuff on our own."
Emin is known for including intimate details about her private life in her work, but she admitted that she was embarrassed by one piece: a display of used tampons. "When I unpacked them I thought, 'Oh no" But that is a work from 12 years ago. At the time it seemed perfectly natural."
Tracey Emin: Love is What You Want runs to August 29 at the Hayward Gallery.