It’s been six years since I had sex, says ‘Bed artist’ Tracey
SHE put her sex life on display in her most famous work – My Bed, complete with dirty sheets and used condoms.
But now artist Tracey Emin has revealed that she has not made love for six years – having swapped her partying London lifestyle for a quiet existence by the seaside.
‘I don’t think I am celibate, I think I abstain from sex,’ she says.
‘Abstaining means I don’t want to have sex. Celibate means you might want to, but you don’t.’
Emin, 54, who rose to prominence 20 years ago as part of the Brit-Art movement, says that she has been single for almost a decade, and now lives only with her 17-year-old cat, Docket.
She is now embracing life in her childhood town of Margate on the south coast of England where she is remaking My Bed, the 1998 art installation created as a monument to bleak times and a broken heart.
‘I have been round the world,’ she said. ‘I am tired. I want to go home. London is so frenetic and chaotic, it is not a good place for creative people any more.
‘It is such a shame because 20 years ago it was.’
The artist, who famously drunkenly barged into a debate on contemporary art on live TV 20 years ago, disclosed that she now rarely touches alcohol. ‘You have a choice: you can go out, have a few drinks and disappear for days, recovering, or think: “I have to get up tomorrow and get on with my work.” ’