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The piece then went on display at the Saatchi Gallery, then at County Hall London, and Saatchi is also said to have displayed the bed in his own dining room. It was bought the following year for £150,000 by Charles Saatchi, an avid collector of YBA art. The polarising work caused such a media frenzy that it pushed the gallery’s visitor numbers up to a record high. My Bed was first displayed at the Tate in 1999 when it was nominated for the Turner prize. It shows her real bed at the time in all its embarrassing glory, with used condoms, dirty underwear and empty bottles of alcohol strewn across the crumpled stained sheets. The piece was made by Emin in 1998 when she was living in a council flat in Waterloo. I am still very proud of it and I am grateful that the right person bought it.”Ĭlose up of My Bed (1998) by Tracey Emin, a snapshot of the artist’s life after a traumatic relationship breakdown. “Back in the 90s, it was all about cool Britannia and the shock factor and now I hope, 15 years later, people will finally see it as a portrait of a younger woman and how time affects all of us. Even forms of contraception, the fact that I don’t have periods anymore, the fact that the belt that went round my waist now only fits around my thigh. And there are things on that bed that now have a place in history. I think people will see it differently as they see me differently. With history and time, the bed now looks incredibly sweet and there’s this enchantment to it. She added: “I think now people see the bed as a very different thing. Weirdly enough, it was actually first shown in Japan but it made itself when it was at the Tate, and the response people had to it is part of its identity.” Speaking at the unveiling of the work at Tate Britain, Emin admitted to feeling “a bit tearful” after seeing it installed: “It’s fantastic, it’s like the work has come home. Tracey Emin’s My Bed installation returns to Tate Britain for the first time in 15 years, as part of the BP Walk through British Art display. “I always admired the honesty of Tracey, but I bought My Bed because it is a metaphor for life, where troubles begin and logics die,” Duerckheim later explained. The sale opened at £650,000, and, after frantic bidding, was bought minutes later by the YBA dealer and owner of the White Cube gallery Jay Jopling, on behalf of Duerckheim. The auction last July was the first time the artwork had gone on sale since it was bought by Charles Saatchi in 2000. However, the gallery could not afford to bid at the Christie’s auction where My Bed eventually sold for £2.54m, more than twice the top pre-sale estimate. The work, which Emin now describes as a portrait of a young woman, was bought last year by the German businessman and collector Count Christian Duerckheim, who has loaned the artwork to the Tate for at least the next 10 years.Įmin, 51, had expressed her wish for the piece to go to a museum and described the Tate as “the natural home” for the work. Tracey Emin’s best known work, her 1998 monument to the heartache of a relationship breakdown, My Bed, has gone on display at Tate Britain for the first time in 15 years. Emin: ‘Bed shows the absolute mess and decay of my life’ Guardian