MUSIC
Iceland’s orchestral encore
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It’s a Saturday morning and the band of the 1st Margate Boys’ and Girls’ Brigade is marching down a side street with pipes and drums ringing out amid a crowd that includes luminaries of the art world, Bob Geldof, and the kids across the road who are still in their pyjamas. Then the town’s Social Singing Choir launches into a version of Madonna’s Like a Prayer that is so lovely people cry. Tracey Emin, too, seems to wipe away a tear as she waits in her tricorn hat and red robe – the official costume of a Freewoman of Margate – to cut the red ribbon and officially open her new art school.
This delightful public performance is an Emin artwork, but not as we know it. Emin’s subject matter until now had always been herself. “That woman knows herself,” as Lucian Freud said approvingly. But this
