Emin: loving and dying for her art

Tracey Emin has said: "When I'm not making art, I feel like I'm dying," as her first big London retrospective, Tracey Emin: Love is What You Want, opens at the Hayward Gallery tomorrow until 29 August.

"I suffer from creative blocks, terrible, and when I'm not making art, I feel like I'm dying... I can't live, I can't breathe," Emin tells SkyArts In Confidence, broadcast on Thursday. "If I'm not making art I'm not who I'm supposed to be."

The exhibition contains new outdoor sculptures Mother, Father, Children, and new neon work Love is What You Want. Of her critics she says: "Don't they understand if they take the piss out the way I talk or the piss out of the way I look or whatever, don't they understand how wrong they are?"

Tracey Emin: My Life in a Column, a collection of her 2005-09 Independent columns, is published today.