Tracey Emin

One of Britain’s most acclaimed and successful contemporary artists, Tracey Emin's works include the installation pieces My Bed and Everyone I Have Ever Slept With 1963-1995. She has also written a memoir, Strangeland, and directed a feature film, Top Spot. Regardless of the medium she works in, she draws heavily from personal experience for her work.

Tracey Emin: My Life In A Column

I'm sitting in the bath. My head is tilted at a 45-degree angle and my eyes peer between the slats of the blind. Vertical and horizontal stripes appear before me, as my eyes make out the distance between the shadows of the buildings below. My exhausted body is soaking on the 53rd floor. The Hudson River, the warehouses, and the 12th,11th, 10th and 9th Avenues are splayed out before me like majestic ribbons. Tiny dots of humanoids and the metallic spangle of automobiles move around below like enchanted ants.

Recently by Tracey Emin

Tracey Emin: My Life In A Column

Friday, 9 May 2008

I am lying on my bed. It's rock hard and slightly bumpy and the pillows are very flat and combobulated.

Tracey Emin: My Life In A Column

Friday, 2 May 2008

When I woke up this morning I felt cold. Even though the covers were warm and snuggly, I, the person inside the covers, felt cold.

Tracey Emin: My Life In A Column

Friday, 25 April 2008

I seem to be going through mental and physical torture. I'm finding it very hard to be able to relax. This morning I woke up very early and lay in bed for an hour trying to think of ways in which I could relax. Even when I'm horizontal, flat out, I feel brittle, like my bones are made of ice, and as much as I would like them to simply just melt, they have far more chance of being crushed.

Tracey Emin: My Life In A Column

Friday, 18 April 2008

I've spent the past few days doing exactly what I wanted to do. I've been driving, driving round and round and round, not just aimlessly but with some intention, with an instructor. The idea was to become more confident, neater, more precise. So I bought myself the time and the teacher. After hours of reverse parking, parallel parking, windy country lanes and motorway safety, I do feel a slightly better driver. But the whole point of driving is to get me somewhere. And today my driving has got me to Margate. It's got me back to exactly where I came from.

Tracey Emin: My Life In A Column

Friday, 11 April 2008

This column was going to read in my own handwriting, in rather large letters: SORRY THERE IS NO COLUMN THIS WEEK, I HAVE A HEADACHE. But I realise that I would be repeating myself quite badly. It seems that every Thursday (that's the day that I write my column), I have a headache.

Tracey Emin: My Life In A Column

Friday, 4 April 2008

Today I have a very strange headache. It's piercing. It feels like a skewer has been tucked behind my right eye, just above the corner of my brow – a very sharp, thin, flat skewer, the kind that has a ring at the end. I can almost mentally see it protruding out of my head. Sometimes it doesn't hurt, just looks weird, and other times it's being gently twisted and the pain is excruciating as it scrapes along the nerve endings of my eye. This headache has been brought on by stress and grief. I have spent the last few days, in between every other waking thought, trying to understand and come to terms with death.

Tracey Emin: My Life In A Column

Friday, 21 March 2008

It's 3.20am. I have just woken up. I'm staring at the TV. A nature programme fills the screen. Fields of marsupials, eagles and hawks; adventurous landscapes and prehistoric lizards resembling extras from Jurassic Park. I'm looking at the whole of Australia through a tiny screen, almost, without sounding corny, as if I am looking through the eye of a needle. Exotic coloured birds that have the appearance of being mystical, birds that I have never seen before. I am scrunched up on the sofa exhausted, as jumping squirrels with really cute little faces fly from one tree to the next.

Tracey Emin: My Life In A Column

Friday, 14 March 2008

"Here comes love, it's like honey la la la-la, la la la-la-laaa, you shook me to the core, keep it coming, keep it coming, KEEP IT COMING, la la la, la laaa." I am having another hard-core New Order moment. My headphones are neatly tucked into my ears underneath my cycle crash helmet. I'm on my fourth lap around the park. My back is soaking wet, my powder-blue silk shirt is completely see-through, and my pale pink bra, small Adidas shorts and Birkenstocks create an outfit that is totally incongruous compared with the cycling-clad speed freaks that go round the park at a good 40 miles an hour. But I'm happy with my speed, my own little pace. It feels super fast to me as I skim down past the beautiful duck pond, right up high over the small hump-back bridge and skim super fast past the twin lakes honoured with the presence of black swans.

Tracey Emin: My Life In A Column

Friday, 7 March 2008

Without sounding too puerile, you'll never guess where I am! For people who know me well, my guessing games will come as no surprise. Guess how much this cost? Guess how long it took me? Guess how many old socks I found in a drawer? Guess how long it took me to fly from London to Sydney? Oops, I've just given the game away!

Tracey Emin: My Life In A Column

Friday, 29 February 2008

I'm sitting here trying to see what I can write, and it's different from thinking, because I have my eyes open and I'm staring beyond everything in front of me. Further than the beef and horseradish sandwich in my hand, past the paperwork on the desk, past the scrawny handwritten word "Uganda" and a long, long way past the window in front of me.

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