It's a Saturday morning and the band of the 1st Margate Boys' and Girls' Brigade is marching down a side street with pipes and drums ringing out amid a crowd that includes luminaries of the art world, Bob Geldof, and the kids across the road who are still in their pyjamas. Then the town's Social Singing Choir launches into a version of Madonna's Like a Prayer that is so lovely people cry. Tracey Emin, too, seems to wipe away a tear as she waits in her tricorn hat and red robe - the official costume of a Freewoman of Margate - to cut the red ribbon and officially open her new art school.
This delightful public performance is an Emin artwork, but not as we know it. Emin's subject matter until now had always been herself. "That woman knows herself," as Lucian Freud said approvingly. But this ceremony is about her embrace of other people. It's about the community she is setting out to create.
Emin announced early last year that she was going to open her own art school in Margate, the Kent seaside town where she's from. Just 15 months later, she is opening the building that houses TEAR (Tracey Emin Artist Residencies), where the first year's intake of 10 young artists from around the world are already settling in. It also provides affordable work spaces for professional artists, called Tracey Emin Studios.
"I think being an artist is quite lonely," she tells me a couple of days ahead of the grand opening, settling into the comfy sofa in the common room of her school. "And I don't have any children. All of these things that other people seem to acquire in life, I don't have.
"And when I thought I might die, I thought: 'Fuck, what have I been doing with my life?' And then I thought: 'Well, if I get through this, I'm going to do something. I'm going to change things.'"
This story is from the April 07, 2023 edition of The Guardian Weekly.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 8,500+ magazines and newspapers.
Already a subscriber ? Sign In
This story is from the April 07, 2023 edition of The Guardian Weekly.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 8,500+ magazines and newspapers.
Already a subscriber? Sign In
World in motion
The Venice Biennale's 'foreigners everywhere' theme leaves Adrian Searle beguiled, tantalised - and frequently appalled
A hard-right tidal wave is coming, and outrunning it will be difficult - Gordon Brown
By the time of the European parliament elections in June, this year's rightward ebb in European politics will have turned into a tidal wave. Ultra-nationalist demagogues and populist-nationalists are now leading the polls in Italy, the Netherlands, France, Austria, Hungary and Slovakia, and running second in Germany and Sweden.
Shock and ore - Anglo sale would strip the jewel from South Africa's crown
The world's largest mining company has a problem. Australia's BHP has set out its intention to snap up the rival miner Anglo American in a multibillion-pound deal that would reshape the global industry.
In his Maga heartlands, Trump is a victim not a defendant
In one US, he cuts a diminished, humbled figure. \"He seems considerably older and he seems annoyed, resigned, maybe angry,\" said broadcaster Rachel Maddow of MSNBC after seeing Donald Trump up close in court. \"He seems like a man who is miserable to be here.\"
The three-coffee ritual that fuels a nation's daily grind
500k Tonnes of coffee beans produced each year by Ethiopian farmers
Seoul man - Ambassador by day, samba sensation by night
Brazil's latest music sensation grinned from ear to ear as he moseyed down Copacabana beach contemplating his unusual rise to fame.
Preserving the shoes of Stutthof
Leather footwear from Nazi concentration camps ended up at the Baltic coast base, and campaigners want them to be salvaged
On French coast, hope outweighs risk of death or Rwanda
Five drowned last week as a packed dinghy tried to cross the Channel, but those seeking a better life remain undeterred
Growing tide of plastic threatens Galápagos species
Animals live amid mounds of waste as piles of bottles, buoys, nets and packaging keep building up in what should be a pristine area
'Peace is over' - Call for west to boost arms production
Ukraine's foreign minister, Dmytro Kuleba, praised US politicians last week for approving a long-delayed military aid package, but said western allies needed to recognise that \"the era of peace in Europe is over\".