In 1998 I had a complete, absolute breakdown, and I spent four days in bed; I was asleep and semi-unconscious. When I eventually did get out of bed, I had some water, went back, looked at the bedroom and couldn鈥檛 believe what I could see; this absolute mess and decay of my life, and then I saw the bed out of that context of this tiny, tiny, bedroom, and I saw it in just like a big, white space. I realised that I had to move the bed and everything into the gallery space.
I was nominated for the Turner Prize in 1999 and in all honesty I never believed all the fuss and everything that would be caused about it; I had no idea. I think in the 1990s British art was making such a huge impression on people and all the tabloids were actually genuinely interested in it, regardless of how they set it up, and so that made the public interested in it, and I think the bed captured people鈥檚 imagination; it was a good thing for zeitgeist of the time.
For me it was important to bring it back to Tate Britain, but I鈥檇 like it to be shown in a different context at Tate Britain, so I wanted it to be shown historically. I chose Francis Bacon because his life was kind of pretty chaotic and he just did whatever he wanted to do, drank whatever he wanted to drink, slept with whoever he wanted to sleep with; he was a maverick within society.
The paintings that I鈥檝e chosen like these big, undulating roles of flesh and these things turning and these folds and everything, and it鈥檚 much the same as the bed; the bed is folding, the bed is turning, the bed is moving. Francis Bacon鈥檚 paintings aren鈥檛 static, they鈥檝e got total movement and so has the bed.
The reason why the drawings are here is because I wanted something which I鈥檓 making right now to accompany the bed, and the drawings are a donation to the Tate because I wanted people to be able to understand how the Tate still relates to what I鈥檓 doing now; there鈥檚 this chaos, there鈥檚 this body, there鈥檚 this movement. The person in those drawings could鈥檝e just walked out of that bed and that also relates to Bacon as well.
When I鈥檓 installing the bed it鈥檚 kind of really sad and very depressing because I鈥檓 actually going into a time capsule of my past. All of the things that are round the bed no longer relate to my life at all, but I鈥檝e got to say I鈥檇 be really stupid to be unhappy about this moment. Bringing it back to the Tate, Tate Britain, and showing it with paintings of my choice, I couldn鈥檛 be happier about that; it鈥檚 just brilliant.
