Artist Tracey Emin focused on the cultural power of art galleries to revivify towns during her stint as guest editor of BBC Radio Four’s Today programme.
However it was Tracey Emin’s politics that grabbed the attention of presenter Justin Webb, who told the artist that someone had written to the programme saying “you musn’t have Tracey Emin in, she’s a Tory stooge.”
The famous Tory voter, 48, admitted she felt like “an outsider” for voting Conservative in the notoriously liberal art world.
Emin defended her political support for David Cameron and for Boris Johnson saying:
"I voted as an individual. I live in a democracy. I'm allowed to vote for what I want and I wish people would understand that.”
The Turner prize winner said that she felt that her vote had been well placed, saying that both Johnson and Cameron had supported the arts, despite it being a time of austerity.
She returned to her childhood home of Margate for the programme visiting the the recently installed Turner contemporary gallery. The art collection was welcomed by residents, offering one of the poorer regions in the South West a makeover. A third of a million visitors have visited the collection since it opened in April, far more than was originally predicted for a gallery outside of London.