ART-PRESENTATION: Tracey Emin-My Bed/JMW Turner
“My Bed” is probably the most notorious work in the oeuvre of Tracey Emin. First shown in 1998 at the Toyko’s Sagacho Exhibition Space, and in New York’s Lehmann Maupin gallery the subsequent year, the work became best known through an exhibition at Tate Modern in 1999 as one of the shortlisted works for the Turner Prize. Because of its appearance, the work immediately gained much media attention and caused a lot of debate.
By Dimitris Lempesis
Photo: Turner Contemporary Archive
Tracey Emin presents at Turner Contemporary, her installation “My Bed” with a collection of JMW Turner’s seascapes and stormy skies, chosen by the artist and loaned from Tate’s collection. The work consists of the artist’s real, wooden bed, with wrinkled sheets, pillows and twisted blankets, but also with tangled nylon stockings and crumpled towels. Strewn around the bed is a clutter of personal effects: empty vodka bottles, slippers and underwear, crushed cigarette packs, a snuffed out candle, condoms and contraceptives, a cuddly toy and several Polaroid self-portraits. Emin presented her bed exactly how it looked like during a difficult period in her life. After spending over a week in bed drifting in and out of consciousness in an alcoholic haze, she reached a realisation. “I just suddenly thought, ‘This is horrific’. And then it all turned around for me. It stopped being horrific and started being beautiful. Because I hadn’t died, had I?” Originally made in Emin’s Waterloo council flat in 1998 and included in her Turner Prize exhibition in 1999, “My Bed” was bought by Charles Saatchi at the 1999 Lehmann Maupin Gallery exhibition, and was displayed as part of his Collection. In the subsequent years it travelled all across the world for exhibitions, until Count Christian Duerckheim, a German businessman and Art Collector bought it in 2014 for over £2.500.000. One year later he gave the work as a long-time loan to the Tate, where it is now part of the display of the Tate’s permanent collection. This is the third location that the work has been shown alongside eminent painters, selected by Emin. In 2015 at Tate Britain “My Bed” was shown alongside Francis Bacon. Emin highlighted his chaotic life, his notoriety as a maverick within society and the movement within his paintings which display big, undulating roles of flesh as reason for her choice. At Tate Liverpool, “My Bed” was paired with works by William Blake. The display affirms Blake’s Romantic idea of artistic truth through existential pain and the possibility of spiritual rebirth through art, shared in Emin’s work.
Info: Turner Contemporary, Rendezvous, Margate, Kent, Duration 13/10/17-14/1/18, Days & Hours: Tue-Sun 10:00-17:00, www.turnercontemporary.org