‘Cancer changed a lot for me’

Artist Tracey Emin has spoken about how her cancer affected her life and work after the King made her a Dame Commander for services to the arts at Buckingham Palace.

Dame Tracey is one of Britain’s most acclaimed artists, a member of the Young British Artists movement of the 1980s, a Turner Prize nominee, and now a member of the Royal Academy of Arts.

Speaking after an investiture ceremony on Tuesday, the Margate-based artist spoke about the health problems she suffered after she was diagnosed with bladder cancer in 2020 and how it had affected her work.

She said the cancer “changed a lot for me” and “suddenly I realised, what am I doing with my life?”.

Dame Tracey said: “I’ve always made really serious art but now I’ve actually tried to put that into a reality of helping other people as well.”

Her Tracey Emin Foundation opened its doors in March 2023, and offers rent-free space to art students in a studio in converted public baths in Margate.

She said: “I think if you come from an impoverished background, it’s almost impossible to even get your qualifications and get into university.

“But one thing I would say is do not be put off by the fees.

“Go to university and worry about it afterwards, because otherwise, if you don’t have the education, you can’t change anything.”

Tracey Emin’s seminal works include Everyone I Have Ever Slept With 1963-1995 – a tent with 102 people’s appliqued names – and My Bed, an art installation consisting of her own unmade bed surrounded by detritus.

She said: “Growing up in Margate, I left school at 13, so many people told me I couldn’t do things, I wasn’t allowed to do this, I couldn’t go to university, I couldn’t be an artist.

“Look at me now. Yes I can, and other people can.”

Asked what she thought of her transition in status from a disruptive contemporary artist to Dame Commander, she said: “I think when I was younger everybody thought I was moaning and screaming and whatever, but now people understand things that I was making work about were important – women’s issues, teenage sex, rape, abuse.

“All of these things really matter, and they matter more now.

“I think this is my time really. So it’s really appropriate and wonderful that I’ve been rewarded for this.”

Additional reporting by PA Media.