Artist Emin gets ‘flashbacks’ over prize-winning bed

Tracey Emin said she gets flashbacks when she is near her "iconic" bed artwork as it is readied to go on auction for the first time.

My Bed, which comes complete with empty vodka bottles, cigarette butts, and discarded condoms, is being sold at Christie’s on Tuesday by the millionaire art collector Charles Saatchi.

The controversial piece, which was shortlisted for the Turner Prize in 1999, is expected to fetch between £800,000 and £1.2m (€1m and €1.5m).

Speaking at Christie’s in central London, where the bed went on display, Emin said she still stands by her work which “changed people’s perceptions of art”.

She said: “This is a surreal experience. Every time I’m near the bed or install the bed I get flashbacks and recollections of when I first saw the bed, which was in my bedroom and that was 16 years ago.

“I can’t really, still, come to the reality of the situation that it’s moved and come so far.

“When I made the bed today, I actually had to get in it and pull the duvet over me and push it back to make it feel real and look real.

“Even the smell and everything, it’s all still there for me.

“It’s very, very evocative. Except it’s like waking up, I wouldn’t say a nightmare, but definitely... it’s really strange.

“It’s now going on a different journey. I just hope it goes to a nice place. It’s helped me a lot.”

Emin, 50, said reactions to the artwork, which she produced after a traumatic relationship breakdown, varied across the globe.

“In Japan, they were shocked by my dirty slippers but they stole some bloody knickers and some condoms,” she said.

“In America, it was like, ’Yeah, we’ve seen feminist art before, we’ve done it already’, no fuss, just treated it like a regular artwork.

“Of course in the UK, it just exploded with the Turner Prize.

“It just went crazy. I still think it’s iconic.

“There was nothing in the world in art that has ever looked like this, that has ever been like this, it’s seminal. It changed people’s perceptions of what art is and what art can be. That’s why it’s still really special to me.

“If I could I would show this at my next exhibition. I still love it, I still stand by it and I made it 16 years ago.”

Saatchi, who paid £150,000 for My Bed in 2000, is selling it to support the work of his public gallery in Chelsea.