Tracey Emin – Abused for voting Tory
Earlier this week, artist Tracey Emin guest edited BBC Radio 4’s Today Programme. Part of the show featured an interview, where she discussed topics such as her home town, Margate, and the economic importance of art, as well as her political views.
Emin backed the coalition’s record on the arts, saying “it’s doing quite good actually, but we are in this time of austerity and everything’s being cut, and there isn’t any money”
When asked about her political views, she said she had voted Conservative twice – Once for Boris Johnson and once for David Cameron – adding “I vote as an individual. I live in a democracy. I’m allowed to vote for what I want and I wish people would understand that.”
However, in the past fellow artists have called her support of the Conservatives “criminal”, and suggested she should not be allowed on the show as she was a “Tory Stooge”.
“The world I live in, people never vote Tory – especially within the art world – so I am a bit of an outsider on that one” she admitted, adding that some people had been “really abusive”
Earlier in the year, she created s neon artwork, More Passion, for David Cameron, and admitted last month that she was a secret royalist.
The radio clip can be heard over on the Telegraphs website:
