Tracey Emin: ‘What would I have done in the past 40 years if I had been sober?’

Stroking her cat Teacup in her studio in Margate, Tracey Emin lets slip that the threat of death from cancer has made her certain about the afterlife.

“You become part of the sun,” she explains. “You disperse and become light. That is the final, final frontier, the last stop: becoming pure light. But you will be judged,” she cheerfully adds. “If you really f***ed up everything you have, and if you’re greedy, it all comes with you. And if you really love animals, they come with you – every single pet you have ever had. If you love clothes, you take your whole wardrobe. Me, I just want to go as light as possible.”

To hold a conversation with Tracey Emin is to enter a stream of consciousness that is diverting, compelling and at times raw, but always original. Very much like her art. From famous works such as My Bed and Everyone I Have Ever Slept with 1963-1995 to her visceral later paintings and sculptures, which sell for up to £2m at auction, Emin has a knack for capturing life at its most earthy and emotionally truthful, its most vulnerable and human. So when we meet to discuss her new show and her future, it’s a little surprising to hear her talk about a world beyond our own.

Well, perhaps not for everyone. She chuckles as she explains how some people get stuck in the afterlife process and end up as wandering ghosts. “I never believed in God, but I now do in an afterlife,” she says.

Her thoughts may be a response to the question her dying mother asked her – “Where am I going?” – to which she had no answer at the time;