Tracey Emin, the creator of all your favourite gorgeous neon installations saying things like ‘You touch my soul’ ‘When I hold you I hold your heart’ and ‘People like you need to fuck people like me’ and, of course, the woman who made art out of her bed, has got married.
The most famous of the Young British Artists has not wedded a person, though, but a rock. And no, it’s not The Rock, the WWE wrestler-turned-actor. But a rock. A French rock, in fact.
While working in her French studio last summer, she found a ring in a box: ‘I put it on my finger and suddenly realised it’s superstitious to put a wedding ring on your finger unless you are getting married, otherwise you have to throw the ring away.’
So, she told The South China Morning Post, she went into the garden and married the stone there, donning a shroud that was originally designed for her father to wear at his funeral (no word yet on whether he’d actually been put in it at his funeral) ‘I thought the stone is so majestic and beautiful, I really do love the stone.’
‘And then I thought about the way I love, how I pour love into things and people, whatever it is, passionately, but not expecting it to be returned either. I just accept that’s the way it is, it’s just me who gives. The stone becomes a metaphor for my feeling.’
She says this marriage inspired part of her new show in Hong Kong. Like much modern art, it leaves many thinking ‘Well anyone could do that’, but then realising that the genius is in who had the idea first, and that we didn't. Tracey did! It's batty, but when so much ridiculously expensive art is so utterly soul-less, it’s lovely to see that Tracey can inject some feeling into all those pieces she's selling to bajillionaires whose closest experience of affection is from the times their doorman accidentally brushes against their Rolex-laden arms...
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This article originally appeared on The Debrief.