Stars Edinburgh-bound for Emin's showcase

Published on Wednesday 9 July 2008 21:46

IT IS set to be the most star-studded party of the Edinburgh Art Festival – with Sir Elton John and George Michael among those on the guest list.

The controversial artist Tracey Emin is throwing a party to launch her career retrospective in the capital, and it's already the talk of the artistic chattering classes in Scotland.

Tracey Emin 20 Years opens next month at the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, filling the bottom floor with about 170 of her works.

Installations include My Bed, the famous unmade bed owned by the Saatchi Gallery, which comes complete with empty bottles, cigarette butts and stained sheets.

There is also a huge wooden rollercoaster, entitled It's Not the Way I Want to Die, and the room where the artist once painted naked in front of gallery-goers.

"She is one of the few artists who can get people's jaws dropping," said the exhibition curator, Patrick Elliott. "Some of the stuff in it is just extraordinary. There's no holds barred in terms of confession – no shame, no level at which it ceases."

The Scotsman can also confirm that the actress and model Jerry Hall is to speak at the National Galleries in September about her friend's art, although it is unlikely that she will be at the opening party on 2 August.

Emin is known for attracting celebrities to her events, and when she launched her Venice Biennale show last summer, representing Britain at the international art showcase, Sir Elton and the supermodel Naomi Campbell both turned out.

Edinburgh may not attract quite the same level of glitterati, but the hype is building. Her London gallery, White Cube, has hired a railway carriage, with room for 55, to bring her assistants, dealers, lenders and friends to Scotland.

"It's a cost-effective way of doing it. We looked into getting seats on EasyJet and that kind of thing, but you've got to provide all the names and numbers in advance and it's impossible to do that," said Mr Elliott.

"It's a nice way to make a day of it, rather than come individually and bump into each other on the platform."

The galleries are being coy about the likely party guests. But Sir Elton and his partner, David Furnish, are invited, having lent their Emin work, an embroidered blanket entitled Something I've Always Been Afraid Of, to the show.

So have George Michael and his partner, Kenny Goss, who lent the 2007 work, Hurricane. Other major Emin buyers have lent work, but are discreetly listed in the exhibition's catalogue as "private collector".

Almost certain to be in Edinburgh are White Cube's owner, Jay Jopling, who studied art history in the city, and his wife, another "young British artist", Sam Taylor Wood.

It is clear that Emin herself is taking her Edinburgh show extremely seriously. She had a scale model made of the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art with miniature reproductions of her work to plan it out. She will spend 12 days in Edinburgh preparing the show.

The first weekend of the Edinburgh Art Festival will also see the opening of the Ingleby Gallery's new building, showcasing contemporary art in a former club near Waverley station.

That is expected to draw artistic luminaries such as Mark Wallinger, the Turner Prize winner.

Where Scotland leads, the world vies to follow

GALLERIES from Spain to Switzerland and Russia have been vying to be the next venue for Tracey Emin 20 Years, which opens in Edinburgh on 2 August.

The exhibition moves on to Malaga and then the Kunstmuseum in Berne, one of the world's great museums.

Patrick Elliott, chief curator at the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, said: "We've had Russian galleries wanting to join the tour.

It's a really good thing for Edinburgh, and Scotland. It's the first retrospective she's had in Britain, and it's quite an honour she has agreed to do it here."

In the last year the 44-year-old artist has "sexed up" the Royal Academy with a room full of erotic works including a model of woman having sex with a zebra.

In August copies of her photographs will also go on show at the Fringe in the Gilded Balloon venue.