3. Tracey Emin – Drunk And Disorderly On Live Television
A live television debate turned into a piece of performance art when YBA artist Tracey Emin turned up in a state of drunk and disorder, after attending the Turner Prize awards dinner in 1997.The self-styled bad girl of British art contributed to the debate with babbling and swearing as pundits ruminated on the absence of painting from the British art scene. Smoking like a chimney and fiddling with her microphone, the artist had one finger in a strangely make-shift splint, adding a dishevelled spontaneity to the evening’s events. Several times during the discussion, as the camera avoided the swearing, a heavily slurring Emin announced that she was going to leave and go back to the party with her friends, stating: “I am the only artist here from that show Sensation,” she announced, “I want to be with my friends. I’m drunk. I want to phone my mum. She’s going to be embarrassed by this conversation. I don’t care. I don’t give a fuck about it.”