Tracey Emin keeps neon message clean for Cameron: ‘More Passion’

A NEW message is greeting visitors to to 10 Downing Street: “More Passion”.

The words, rendered in dazzling neon, are a work by artist Tracey Emin

A spokesperson for Prime Minister David Cameron said yesterday that the work was installed last week in a busy hallway, above the door to Downing Street’s Terracotta Room.

It stands in contrast to the oil paintings and portraits of former prime ministers elsewhere in the 300-year-old house.

Emin said earlier this year that she wanted to hang a piece in Downing Street to give the building “a bit of an edge”.

She was invited to install the neon sign by Mr Cameron.

One of the Young British Artists who burst on to the art scene in the 1990s, Emin is renowned for her provocative and confessional art. Her most famous works include a recreation of her dishevelled bed and an appliqued tent entitled Everyone I Have Ever Slept With.

Emin, 48, said she would keep her message clean for Downing Street. She added: “It has to be something that will relate to different people on different levels, because of all the dignitaries and world leaders and religious groups who go to No 10, so it has to be something that’s fitting for that situation.”

Emin has donated the piece to the Government Art Collection, a trove of more than 13,000 works by British artists from the 16th century onwards.