Emin's take on Bourgeois works shown in London

It is perhaps the art world's most intriguing collaborations of recent years; drawings begun by the great French artist Louise Bourgeois shortly before she died in May this year, and completed by Britart icon Tracey Emin. Now the collection of 16 works that make up Do Not Abandon Me are coming to London.

The Bourgeois-Emin collaboration began last year when Bourgeois – who was connected to Emin via a mutual friend, the late critic Stuart Morgan – sent Emin a set of 16 delicate gouache paintings of the human form.

According to Gregor Muir, director of the London gallery Hauser & Wirth ,where the works will be shown next February, Bourgeois gave Emin carte blanche to do with them as she wished.

Emin told the Art Newspaper: "I feel Louise was literally holding a baton that I should take, just in terms of passing the work on to me." Emin has long cited Ms Bourgeois as an influence. Her 2005 work The Older Woman bore the sentence: "I think my Dad should have gone out with someone older like Louise, Louise Bourgeois."