Tracey Emin is still the real thing – and that's why we love her

With an exhibition of works inspired by her hero Egon Schiele opening in Vienna, the artist talks about ‘mad Tracey from Margate’, conceptual art and sex

She was drunk. She was foulmouthed. And somehow she had stumbled on to a live television programme among a group of art critics, all male.

“I wasn’t even aware I was on television,” says Tracey Emin 18 years after a spectacular performance in a TV debate following the 1997 Turner prize made her a celebrity. As Waldemar Januszczak and Roger Scruton tried to argue about conceptual art, Emin declared, among other nuggets: “Don’t you understand? I want to be free. Get this fucking mike off.”

When I got nominated for the Turner prize, I was asleep. Mat woke me up and there was a picture of my bottom on screen

I haven’t had sex for five years. More. It’s something gone. It’s like a memory or something

People who knew me couldn’t believe that this out-of-touch figurative painter was suddenly having a show at White Cube

Related: Tracey Emin: soundtrack of my life

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