Naked City: Get your head around an unmade bed!
Image: 'My Bed' by Tracey Emin
It was a bed that looked like it could have spent a cold winter’s night under the railway bridge in Walla Mulla Park in Woolloomooloo – dishevelled, bedgraggled and garnished with all manner of empty bottles, cigarette butts and other miscellaneous accoutrements. In the ‘loo it would be near worthless but in the cashed up environment of Christie’s auction house in London it brought in a staggering, mind boggling $4.5 million.
Yes, believe it or not, that was the final bid for British artist Tracy Emin’s controversial installation piece My Bed, well exceeding the estimate price of a measly $2 million. Previously owned by collector Charles Saatchi, the ex of celebrity chef Nigella Lawson, it was a creation that had polarised the art world since Tracy Emin first pulled back the sheets in her council flat in 1998 and let the condoms loose.
We’re not sure who actually forked out the big bucks to purchase My Bed, but the question does arise, just what would you do with such an artwork once you had purchased it? Hardly a conversation piece for the reception room of your three-storey townhouse on the Thames, and it’s unlikely you would ever put it to its original use and kip down for the night. It would more than likely be placed on temporary loan to some highbrow gallery or secreted in a secure storage unit as an investment piece for the future.
Personally, given its ongoing notoriety, we’d love to see My Bed travel to Australia as a kind of ambassador for British installation art. Whether it comes for the next Biennale or undergoes a more street-friendly, rock ’n’ roll-style tour, its mere presence down under is sure to generate controversy and enrage both the tabloid press and shock jocks alike. Loaded on the back of a truck it could easily do a ticker tape parade down George Street, followed by a civic reception at the Town Hall, providing yet another great photo op for the Lord Mayor.
We’d be confident an art-lover like Malcolm Turnbull would get in the spirit and hire the bed for one of his winter sleep outs. Fitted with an adequate motor it could also embark on a Cliff Young-style marathon, down the Hume to Melbourne where giant floaties could see it sail down the Yarra as the unofficial king of Moomba with Bert Newton snuggly tucked inside.
The possibilities of course are endless and we are confident that despite an initial scepticism, the Australian public would eventually embrace My Bed, showering it with additional accoutrements like crack pipes, live cockroaches, well-worn sex toys and half-eaten edible underpants as it toured the length and breadth of the country.
Many would say moving such a ‘delicate’ piece with all its sleazy bits and bobs could result in major damage or the bed disappearing altogether – shipped off to the Salvos by some well-meaning soul. Let’s face it, if My Bed did meet with misfortune, it would be a simple matter to sneak down to the local Snooze City, purchase a look-a-like bed and install it in one of those seedy Marrickville boarding houses for a week. Broken in with cigarette burns and unsightly bodily stains, much like the original, it could be dispatched back to London with nobody the wiser. We hesitate to parrot the well-worn adage but what the heck! “You’ve made your bed and now you’ll have to lie in it.”
