Tracey Emin and Harland Miller on Collaboration

Posted by Fabio 17 October 2013

To celebrate the most anticipated hotel launch of the year, The London EDITION and online magazine NOWNESS have created a series of five films exploring the concept of collaboration. The London EDITION, the latest from EDITION Hotels is the brand Ian Schrager conceived in a partnership with Marriott International.

This collaborative theme is present in the five films shot by internationally acclaimed photographer and director, Johnnie Shand Kydd with the fourth film in the series, Dedication, is live today for Frieze Art Fair. Tracey Emin and Harland Miller, two names synonymous with London’s contemporary art scene, come together to muse on the focused and frequently isolated world that artists inhabit.

‘Rather than a collaboration, I see it more as helping each other out’ says Emin. ‘When I was a younger artist, we all used to do that.’ Emin rose to international fame in the late 1990s as one of a new wave of British conceptual artists championed by collector Charles Saatchi, and featured in his seminal exhibition of 1997 Sensation. The duo also discusses their occasional collaborations with other artists, including each other.

Miller has published several novels and become known for his large canvasses depicting satirical, fictional Penguin covers, and in 2008 organized an exhibition, You Dig the Tunnel, I’ll Hide the Soil, at London’s White Cube Gallery, where he asked artists as well as Emin to make a work as a response to a particular piece of writing by Edgar Allan Poe. Emin obliterated Miller’s own contribution to their joint work by painting over it, but Miller remained unfazed. “That’s a positive part of collaboration,” says Miller. “You have to take it on the chin.”

The final film see Johnnie Shand Kydd focus on music. Singer-songwriter Solange Knowles discusses visual arts within the world of music with Nigerian artist Toyin Odutola, who has exhibited her portraits of Solange in her latest solo show at Jack Shainman New York.

www.editionhotels.com
www.nowness.com