Tracey Emin

The outspoken, provocative London artist, speaks up...

JL: When did you start smoking?

TE: I can’t really include the first time I had a puff – I started smoking on my own when I was about thirteen.

JL: Was that because of your friends?

TE: Major peer pressure from my mum, no really my family – everyone smoked.  I didn’t want to smoke because I did cross-country running.  One day I just thought, ‘Oh fuck it’, went off and bought some fags and just started smoking; if you can’t beat them, join them.

JL: How did your cross-country running go, after that?

TE: It kind of slowed down considerably, I’d say.

JL: Did you stop for a puff, sometimes?

TE:  I used to run very fast, disappear round the corner, and then sit around for a while, smoking fags, then sprint like hell for the end – finally I lost heart.

JL: What do you smoke now?

TE: I smoke Marlborough Lights, but I think I want to change to American Spirit.

JL: Why?

TE: Because they’ve got no chemicals in them and no toxics.  And I have really chronic headaches, and my eyes water all the time.  I try to blame it on many things, but at the end of the day I think it’s smoking. I stopped smoking for two and a half years, 1990 – 1993. I put a fag out and I thought, ‘Right!  That’s it.’ It was so easy because I was pregnant at the time. Then me and Sarah Lucas did the shop and thought it would be funny if we were both smoking. I thought I could just start and stop whenever I like.  

JL: What influence has smoking had on art?

TE: It’s had quite a big influence, in a weird way, cos smoking kind of conjures up images of decadence and that kind of thing.

JL: And what influence has smoking had on your work?

TE: Not so much influence - I haven’t done much work with smoking, as such.  It’s more like when I’m working, I tend to chain-smoke, which is really bad. I like writing in the morning but I don’t smoke in the morning, so I tend not to write any more.

JL: That’s a shame…

TE: No, I do…I have to fit it in, somewhere. But, you know, it’s a problem.

JL: You’ve actually included fags in some of your work…

TE: Quite a lot. Because at the time I probably was smoking.  Also, I made my ‘Uncle Colin’ piece, which had a packet of Benson & Hedges in, because he died in a car crash and when he died he was actually holding them in his hand.

JL: Do you think in the near future we'll be spending more time looking at smoking as an art form, than actually smoking?

TE: No. Smoking is addictive, and pleasurable in some cases.  It’s the thing people do to unwind.  It’s not to be associated with art. Artists might use cigarettes or smoking or whatever in their work, but I don’t think they’d say smoking is an art form.

JL: What about people collecting old fag packets and all that smoking ephemera for the design?

TE: That’s the art of packaging. It’s not to be confused with smoking as an art form.

JL: If an anti-smoking gallery owner refused to exhibit your work, on the grounds that it encouraged smoking, what would you do?

TE: I wouldn’t be showing with that gallery, would I, because they wouldn’t be interested in me.  They’re gonna be so fucking anally retentive, they’re not going to like my work, in the first place.  Saying that, a lot of galleries in America are non-smoking.  The gallerists aren’t against smoking, it’s just that it’s against the law to smoke in a public place over there.  You don’t really have much choice on that one.

JL: Do you mind if people smoke while looking at your work?

TE: I don’t like it because a lot of my work is textiles, and quite fragile. I don’t want it to be absolutely reeking of smoke.

JL: If there was a button that, once pressed, would remove every image of smoking from the world's art galleries, would you press it?

TE: No, of course not. I think people should be able to choose what they wanna do.  But I know smoking is not good for me, and I’m a happier person when I’m not doing it. I don’t smoke in the mornings, but when I start, I chain-smoke.

JL: So would you like to give up smoking?

TE: Yeah, if I could press a button and remove every ounce of nicotine from my body and I’d never smoke again, then I would – absolutely, fucking, definitely.