Tracey Emin

This week I rented a DVD from the library called "TRACEY EMIN"

It is a short video interview of about 25 minutes long.

I found the video to be quite inspiring because Tracey Emin talks about her work as though she is referring to a limb of her body. She is very much intune with her work, and it is very much a personal thing to her. This, to me, is a positive attitude towards your working practice.

She states "I Always say if I didn't make art, I'd probably be dead... But let's be more realistic about that. If I didn't make art and I'd done well in life, then I might have gone into retail. I would probably be the person in the shop that would be always prganising the display, and always making the noticeboard look nice in the canteen, stuff like that. I'm a genuinely creative person."

Before making this statement she talks about the troubles she has been faced with in earlier chapters of her life, such as having no money and suffering from depression. She talks about how these dark areas and low times have affected the work she has produced, such as "My Bed" which she says she produced only for herself, as a statement to herself and as a wake up call. To help her to move on from those troubled times and to turn those dark and low times into a positive. She reflects that she felt particularly vunerable when creating "My Bed", and one of the most worrying aspects of the piece was that people she knew and cared about would see "all those things" cluttered in and around the bed.

After renting out this DVD I think I will definitely rent more in the future. I felt that I understood the meanings behind the words more hearing it straight from the artist. I am a visually driven worker physically seeing and hearing helps me to connect with what is being said, rather than reading from a book. I found it very useful, and would advise others to rent more DVD's from the library.