Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
2 appearances
Artist known for controversial works 'Everyone I Have Ever Slept With' and 'My Bed', shortlisted for the Turner Prize.
On the island
Eight records
This one in particular, I have it because it's a soundtrack from one of my films. And the film is actually me riding across Margate Beach on a horse.
this song reminds me of one of the happier times in my life when I was a kid with me and my brother and a whole load of us friends listening to the Beach Boys and actually jumping in the harbour wall
this really reminds me of Margate in nineteen seventy seven at a place called the Ballet High, Disco. All the trendy soul people, all the punks, everyone used to come down to Margate. And I was fourteen and I remember wearing Drainpipe jeans, silver dance shoes and a mohair jumper and I was 14 and I was dancing.
I'm godmother to Mick Jones's daughter Stella, so I'd like to say hello Stelle.
this reminds me of my mum and this is the kind of song which I think will haunt me. Forever. It sounds silly, but no, I think if I don't ever become a mother, I think I'll be very upset and sad about that when I'm especially when I'm old
I was in Istanbul a few years ago and I hadn't had sex for a year and I had a walkman on. And I was listening to Elvis Presley Burning Up again and again and again and again and again because I was burning up.
When I was about 14 I started coming nightclubbing in London and dancing was my life then and this song, every time I hear it, it makes me happy and the lyrics are really good because they're kind of half really sexist and kind of vile but also half quite amazing.
Young AmericansFavourite
For me, young Americans is about what can happen to us all just in a second, just in a moment? And uh can I name drop? I'm friends with David Enrow so it's really good to have one of his songs on the list.
In conversation
Presenter asks
0:43How much has your art, which is so autobiographical and confessional, saved you from yourself?
I think it started off like that. … What I like about my art and what's kept me going is the fact that it's about communication and that's where the survival is. While I'm making my art and I'm communicating, then I'm obviously not alone, and that's what's important.
Presenter asks
6:08Why did you never become a dancer?
In Margate the best dancers were men, and there was a lot of p pressure from them, older men. In fact I had slept with most of them. Just wasn't conducive to the whole idea of being a dancer. This is speaking in metaphors. I was pushed off the dance floor, that's for sure.
Presenter asks
8:12Why didn't you [go to the police or complain after being raped]?
Because you didn't in those days. This is like in the seventies, mid seventies.
Presenter asks
The keepsakes
The book
Baruch Spinoza
Because it reads like poetry. Yeah, it's philosophy. It also reads like a kind of guideline for some kind of spiritual enlightenment. So if you're trapped on a desert island on your own, it could be quite lonely. So you'd have to connect with nature in a good way. And Spinoza's ethics would be really good to help you do that without feeling alone. You'd actually start to understand and feel one with everything.
Why did you find [Maidstone College of Art] so attractive?
I got to Maidstone at eight o'clock in the morning'cause I had no money and someone had given me a lift. and I sat outside, and the dinner ladies from the canteen were coming in, and they took me in and they made me a cup of tea. And also Maidstone was beautiful because it was in Oakwood Park. … I loved it. I loved every single moment of it.
Presenter asks
26:40Is there a danger of your turning into a kind of discrete watercolourist [in your middle age]?
I hope so,'cause I want to go I want to go to Rome and make oil paintings. I hope that's exactly where I'm heading.
“As an artist, to get some kind of notoriety or some kind of credit or fame, then you have to make a seminal piece of work. Or you have to change the face of what people understand as art or as contemporary art. I've done that with two pieces of work. I've done it with my tent and I've done it with my bed.”
“I smashed it all up and I threw it in rubbish bins and I got rid of it all and said, right, art's over. Because after being pregnant, I understood the true essence of creativity for myself. So then I couldn't justify the art that I was making. It was just more objects filling up the world, more rubbish, more stuff, and I couldn't justify it.”
“I'm not a Trust Fund girl. Everything I had I worked for myself. I worked for this. I made this happen. And I want to show other people that they can do that.”
“I stopped smoking on my own after smoking for 27 years last Christmas, Christmas Day, and I want to give myself another gift. I want to be free. I want to break away from the alcohol. I can't stand it.”