Emin blasts ‘philistine’ Boris as her show closes
ARTIST Tracey Emin has launched a furious assault on Government Ministers, calling them ‘philistines’ for keeping shops and gyms open in the Covid crisis but allowing galleries and museums to shut down.
Her latest exhibition at the Royal Academy of Arts, which she says ‘kept her going’ through her battle with bladder cancer, was forced to close after London was put into to tier 3 last Monday.
As the capital headed into tougher restrictions, Tracey, 57, surprised security staff at the gallery by turning up and asking if they knew what would happen to her exhibition.
And now she has turned her wrath on Boris Johnson and Culture Secretary Oliver Dowden for failing to protect culture and arts – while backing shops and gyms.
Tracey told me: ‘The Government hasn’t bothered to distinguish between art and culture and nightclubs and gyms. How can a gym be open but not a museum? Boris Johnson needs to understand the difference between them.
‘How can Harrods be open, how can you have a bun fight in there but galleries be closed? Man can’t live on food alone, we need culture to make us feel full and whole. There is space in the museums, they’re safe and organised. Our politicians are philistines. I bet they haven’t bothered to go to the ballet, or to the National Gallery, to museums. I would quite like to know where they have been.’
Tracey’s exhibition, which was three years in the planning, is a collaboration with the work of the late Norwegian artist Edvard Munch, who painted the famous picture The Scream. It is due to finish on February 28 but despite being sold out – selling 16,000 advance tickets – it won’t be extended, as a David Hockney event will replace it.
Tracey turned up unannounced at the Royal Academy last Monday with a friend. A source there said: ‘She came in and spoke to me because she was really worried about London going into tier 3 and she was asking what it meant for her exhibition.’
Tracey, reportedly worth about £15 million, is one of the richest living artists. In 2014 she sold her famous My Bed installation for an eye-watering £2.2 million.
She was diagnosed with bladder cancer at the end of June and is in remission after major surgery.