Tracey Emin 'marries' a stone in French studio

'It just means that at the moment I am not alone', says the artist

Last summer, Tracey Emin found a box with a ring in it, which she placed on her wedding ring finger. Then she remembered a superstition about wearing rings on that finger without actually being married, so she got dressed in her father's white funeral shroud, walked out into the garden of her studio in the south of France, and ‘married’ a rock sat there.

Of course, their union isn't quite an official one.

The Turner Prize-winning artist says this symbolic union is a metaphor for a number of feelings; the way love can be bestowed upon someone or something without being reciprocated; how an inanimate object symbolises a spiritual love that transcends the physical; the desire to form a union with another.

“I thought the stone is so majestic and beautiful, I really do love the stone,” she told the South China Morning Post. “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.”

Emin, whose work often explores themes of love, relationships, desire and sexuality, told Art Newspaper it makes her feel connected to something. “It just means that at the moment I am not alone; somewhere on a hill facing the sea, there is a very beautiful ancient stone, and it’s not going anywhere. It will be there, waiting for me.”

This union has formed the inspiration for her latest show in Hong Kong, I Cried Because I Love You.