![]() Nowhere was hiring and I was about to give up when a landlady in a glittery cardigan and a slash of coral lipstick looked me up and down. I traipsed around Brick Lane with a wad of CVs. Tracey pulled her shame from her mouth like a thread of light and hung it on the gallery walls for everyone to see.ĭuring my first year at university, I needed a job because I didn’t have any money. I didn’t know that it was possible to tell the story of your own life like that to take the hurt and the dreams caught beneath your skin and make them visible. It was the first time I’d seen art that felt as though it was speaking directly to me. I was at uni studying English literature and often found the academic language used to discuss art and writing alienating, but my connection with Tracey’s work was immediate and visceral I felt it in my blood. I listened to her talking about her abortion on film and I watched a video of her naming the men who sexually assaulted her when she was a teen in Margate, spinning in circles to a Sylvester song in her silky red shirt. As I walked around her exhibition – reading the words, ‘A terrible wanting’ and ‘My brains all split up’ on her appliquéd blankets, staring at her searing neons and studying her trembling, painful monoprints of the female form – a hot, dense redness swelled inside of me. That was the kind of woman I wanted to be. I read that she was wild and subversive, that she did what she wanted and caused a stir. The only thing I really knew about Tracey was her famous unmade bed. I was full of chaos, and I marvelled at the way artists could unspool their own feelings and make them into something, giving their experiences form and colour that other people could touch. In London, I spent weekends wandering around cavernous white spaces, wonderstruck by the splattered canvasses, towering sculptures and flashing lights. I’d moved from Sunderland, where there was one small gallery. I’d only been living in the city for a year and I didn’t know who I was there yet. It feels as if it has been stripped of all superfluous material and we're left with only those moments of her life that Tracey feels are defining and important.When I was 19, I went to see Love is What You Want, a mid-career retrospective of Tracey Emin’s work at the Hayward Gallery in London. It really is wonderful.' - Louise Sherwin-Stark, Sales 'It took me totally by surprise - her ability as a writer, the mixture of styles, the brutal honesty of it all. I am not sure what I was expecting, but I wasn't expecting her warmth, wit and humour. ![]() It blew me away.' - Hugo Hutchison, Marketing 'Reading STRANGELAND is like drinking a bottle of vodka with Tracey and listening to her talk, with real honesty, about everything. No pretension, no primadonna hysterics - just a beautifully crafted and brutally honest exploration of her world. This book is a reminder of why so many people respond with their hearts to her work.' - Metro 'It took me by surprise with its incredibly upfront yet poignant portrait of Tracey's life. A remarkable book - and a beautiful mind.' - Croydon Advertiser 'A fantastically engaging storyteller.Emin is heartbreaking. 'Emin retains a profoundly romantic world view, paired with an uncompromising honesty.
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