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Trendies drink to CAMART - the campaign for real Tracey

Jane Hughes
Sunday 07 November 1999 00:02 GMT
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SHE featured vodka bottles in her shortlisted entry for the Turner Prize, My Bed. Now artist Tracey Emin has gone one step further, emblazoning herself over a beer label.

Leaving her chaotic bedroom behind her, Miss Emin, 35, has moved on to the bathroom for her latest project, a design for 3,000 bottles of Beck's beer.

She has photographed herself, grinning and semi-immersed in a bubble bath to "emulate a nautical idea", she says, and create a "frothy" image for the lager.

The Year 2000 label celebrates 15 years of the company's support for the avant garde. It will be marked on Thursday by the launch of Beck's Futures, a new arts award that promises to offer more prize money than the pounds 20,000 Turner for its combined categories. Set up in conjunction with the Institute of Contemporary Arts, the award aims to raise the profile of up-and-coming artists, not yet established enough to compete for the Turner. It will encompass photography, film, installation, painting and sculpture. The winners will be announced next year.

Miss Emin is the latest "Britart" name to design a Becks label. The bottles, which are given away to trendsetters rather than sold commercially, have become collectors items, some changing hands for more than pounds 500. The first were designed by Gilbert and George in 1987 to accompany their photo exhibition The Complete Pictures, sponsored by Beck's.

The voyage of George Wylie's liner-sized paper boat down the Thames was celebrated with a label to his design in 1989, and he was followed by Bruce McLean in 1990, Richard Long in 1991 and Tim Head in 1992.

Rachel Whiteread's "House", a plaster cast of the inside of a London terrace house erected in the East End in 1993 and co-sponsored by Beck's, also featured on limited edition labels in the same year. In 1995 labels were produced based on Damien Hirst's "spot" paintings.

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