Exhibition pairs Tracey Emin's My Bed with a collection of works by JMW Turner

Tracey Emin returns to Turner Contemporary with an exhibition pairing her iconic and controversial installation My Bed with a collection of JMW Turner’s seascapes and stormy skies, chosen by the artist and loaned from Tate’s collection. My Bed famously features Emin’s own bed and gives a snapshot of her life after a traumatic relationship breakdown. It offers an unconventional and uncompromising self-portrait through objects, in which the artist herself is absent. The artist’s unmade bed —surrounded by used condoms, stained underwear, cigarette butts and empty vodka bottles — marked a moment of epiphany in Emin’s life. After spending over a week in bed drifting in and out of consciousness in an alcoholic haze, she reached a realisation. ‘I just suddenly thought, “This is horr ific.” And then it all turned around for me. It stopped being horrific and started being beautiful