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<\/p>\nMy Bed appears as part of her Tracey Emin: A Second Life exhibition at London\u2019s Tate Modern, which launched on Friday\n<\/p>\n
The controversial 1998 installation, which was inspired following a depressive episode which saw the artist spend four days in bed, consists of Emin\u2019s own dishevelled sheet-stained bed surrounded by detritus including used condoms, empty vodka bottles and cigarette butts.<\/p>\n
Known as one of Emin\u2019s best known-installations, My Bed appears as part of her Tracey Emin: A Second Life exhibition at London\u2019s Tate Modern, which launched on Friday.<\/p>\n
Speaking on BBC\u2019s Ready To Talk with Emma Barnett podcast, Emin revealed the logistics of her infamous art installation. adding that when it is being set up or taken down, a hazmat suit has to be worn.<\/p>\n
She said: \u201cThe bed can only be shown about every five years and only for a certain amount of time because of the fragility of everything.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt is like a crime scene. It is phenomenal.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have to wear those hazmat suits.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt has all these little pockets and boxes, and in it is lots of little bags with everything in it, each thing, like two safety pins, apple core, condoms.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe only thing that got changed over about 20 years ago was the Nurofen and headache pills because they were worried that they might be taken or whatever. So health and safety made me change them over.\u201d<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Detail from Dame Tracey Emin\u2019s artwork, My Bed, 1998, ahead of the new exhibition, Tracey Emin: A Second Life at London\u2019s Tate Modern (Yui Mok\/PA)<\/p>\n
She added that despite the bed being hers, she no longer owns it and that the Tate is responsible for its identity.<\/p>\n
The acclaimed British artist, 62, was diagnosed with bladder cancer in 2020 and underwent major surgery including an urostomy.<\/p>\n
Speaking about how she felt installing the bed post cancer, she said: \u201cIt\u2019s sad.<\/p>\n
\u201cLast time I\u2019d installed it, I was fit. I hadn\u2019t gone through all of what I\u2019ve gone through and emotionally, it would have pulled something through me as I was reinstalling it, sense of memory, time, all of these things.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe value of something, does this relate, does this matter? Who is this person? Am I that person? Is any part of me left still remaining in that bed? My spirit, my soul. Where is the energy from the person who created the person who survived this bed? Have they gone and come back again? All of these questions. That\u2019s what I was thinking as I was doing it, and it was really, really sad.<\/p>\n
\u201cI feel like crying now. I don\u2019t know why it affected me so much, but it did. It was really strange.<\/p>\n
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<\/p>\n
Dame Tracey Emin ahead of the new exhibition, Tracey Emin: A Second Life at London\u2019s Tate Modern (Yui Mok\/PA)<\/p>\n
\u201cThis bed that\u2019s at the Tate, I hate it in a way. It\u2019s so sad, whereas the one at Turner (Contemporary Art Gallery) wasn\u2019t sad and then the one in Liverpool looked angry. The bed has its own power, its own way, its own life in a way.<\/p>\n
\u201cEvery time I installed the bed, it has a different sort of character about it, a different feeling.\u201d<\/p>\n
The exhibition, which runs until August 31, includes works from her first-ever solo exhibition at White Cube in 1993, and two of her best-known installations, Exorcism Of The Last Painting I Ever Made (1996) and My Bed (1998), the latter of which was nominated for the Turner Prize.<\/p>\n
Emin is a member of the Young British Artists movement of the 1980s and a member of the Royal Academy of Arts.<\/p>\n
The full Ready to Talk with Emma Barnett episode can be listened to on BBC Sounds.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"My Bed appears as part of her Tracey Emin: A Second Life exhibition at London\u2019s Tate Modern, which…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":320482,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[307,304,305,306,308,93,61,60,898],"class_list":["post-320481","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-arts-and-design","tag-arts","tag-arts-and-design","tag-artsanddesign","tag-artsdesign","tag-design","tag-entertainment","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-latest-news-ticker"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/320481","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=320481"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/320481\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/320482"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=320481"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=320481"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=320481"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}