A Second Life At Tate Modern: Inside The Mind Of Tracey Emin

On meeting one of the most important contemporary artists of her generation – and making her bed …

I still have flashbacks to a sun-dappled terrace in Provence where Tracey Emin is penning the phrase Passion For Life in her distinctive cursive style in lipstick red ink. As she works she sips on some Pétale de Rose, before handing my boss the final version with a flourish. This sketch became both the title and cover of Joan Collins’ memoir which I had transcribed, part of my role as her former PA. That was the summer of 2013, when Emin was a frequent guest at Joan’s villa outside St Tropez. Her studio was nearby, in Le Lavandou, where she notably created a series of self-portraits and famously married a stone in her garden, explaining the latter as, “an anchor, something I can identify with”.

Exorcism of The Last Painting I Ever Made (1996).

I expected Emin to be bonkers and bolshy, after all she was a key member of the shock-happy, sweary YBAs (Young British Artists) of the late 1980s which included Damien Hirst and Sarah Lucas. If fraught, tender, powerful and harrowing have been frequent descriptors of her work, then love, trauma and sex are its recurring themes, rendered as nudes, giant tapestries and installations like Everyone I Ever Slept With 1963-1995, a tent depicting 102 names, once owned by Charles Saatchi. “The most beautiful thing is honesty, even if it’s really painful to look at,” she believes. Her poetic neon lights, such as I Want My Time With You hang in London’s St Pancras Station and Florence’s arty Hotel Savoy.

I Whisper to My Past Do I Have Another Choice (2010).

I met Emin during a relatively calm period of her turbulent life when she was justifiably enjoying international acclaim, and extending her reach. Remember the jewellery collaboration with Stephen Webster or the Annie Leibovitz campaign for Marks & Spencer? I expected arrogance but found humour and warmth. David Bowie described her as “uncommonly sexy”; she’s a true jolie laide. Though they seemed unlikely friends, Collins and Emin are very similar (they’re both Dames with fabulous pins) in their outspoken opinions, love of parties and penchant for fashion. Emin has an enviable collection of Vivienne Westwood dresses. “There’s an alchemy to her clothes – they’re more than just something you wear,” she told Vogue. She studied fashion at Medway College of Design before switching to art, graduating from London’s Royal College of Art.

The End of Love (2024).

In a surreal twist, one of my daily tasks was to make Emin’s bed. I thought about taking photographs but discretion, rather than a NDA, held me back. Suffice to say it was tidier than her career-making Turner-prize nominated installation, My Bed (1998), strewn with vodka bottles, cigarette butts and dirty underwear documenting her recovery from a breakdown. “The bed is the physical ghost of my own existence,” she explained at the time. This will be on show at London’s Tate Modern, part of her upcoming exhibition A Second Life, one of over 90 old and new works spanning her 40-year practice. Other key pieces include My Major Retrospective 1982-93, tiny photographs of her art school paintings from the 1980s and early 1990s which she destroyed following a difficult period of her life. The poignant video work, Why I Never Became A Dancer (1995), recounts traumatic events from her teenage years in the coastal town of Margate, where she now lives.

I Followed You to The End, (2024); Yale Centre for British Art.

The exhibition addresses her own “second life”. Emin’s sculpture Ascension (2024) explores her relationship with her body following surgeries for bladder cancer; she now wears a stoma and urostomy bag. If, at 62, her physical strength has diminished, her creativity has not waned. Recent graphic line paintings portray her experience of cancer and disability with urgency, nodding to muses Egon Schiele and Edvard Munch. She alternates working from her “boffice” (staying in bed until midday), and teaching life drawing at the Tracey Emin Artist Residency, a free studio-based art school she established in 2023. “Sometimes when I’m in a strange mood or maybe a bit low, I try to take myself out of it by drawing a bird,” she told Vanity Fair.

Emin calls the Tate Modern exhibition, “a moment in my life when I look back and go forward. A true celebration of living”. Both mantra and modus operandi, Emin’s courage and confessional approach to art is admirable. I will never forget her generosity. Beside my desk hangs one of the signed drafts of Passion for Life and a thank you note – possibly the most valuable letter I have ever received.