Feature: Tracey Emin's unmade bed goes on show in Liverpool

It could be an unmade bed in any student flat in any British university city.

But the one going on display Friday at the Tate gallery in Liverpool is special, so special it was bought in 2014 for a staggering 2.9 million U.S. dollars.

The unmade bed is regarded as one of Britain's most renowned artworks of the past 20 years, created by celebrated artist Tracey Emin.

Her artwork, known simply as "My Bed 1998", will be on show at at Tate for a year-long stay.

Regarded as one of the most defining works of British art in recent years it is the first time Emin's bed has been displayed in the north of England.

My Bed, is coming to rest at Tate Liverpool where gallery curators have hooked Emin's work up with that of the visionary British poet and artist William Blake.

The Tate says there are "surprising links" between the two artists, and the free show will highlight Emin and Blake's shared concerns with spirituality, birth and death.

My Bed was first shown at Tate Britain in the exhibition for the 1999 Turner Prize, one of the world's best known art prizes. Emin's unmade bed was shortlisted. It didn't win the prestigious prize, but it is the one that everyone remembers.

It was presented in the state that Emin claimed it had been when she said she had not got up from it for several days due to suicidal depression, brought on by relationship difficulties, and features an unmade bed and a floor littered with empty vodka bottles, cigarette butts, underwear with menstrual stains and condoms.

Blake (1757-1827) stood against the hypocrisies of his age and was vocal in his support of liberalism, sexual freedoms and above all advocated for unrestrained imaginative freedom of expression. He spent most of his life in London, where the city and its people inspired his fantastic and, at times, nightmarish visions.

A Tate spokeswomen said: "The new display affirms Blake's Romantic idea of artistic authenticity through existential pain and the possibility of spiritual rebirth through art shared in the work of Tracey Emin."

My Bed, along with drawings by Emin from the Tate collection, will be on show alongside those of Blake "in the context of Emin's empty bed, and symbolising the absent figure". The Blake works include The Blasphemer c.1800, The Crucifixion: 'Behold Thy Mother' c.1805 and other figurative works.

Emin was born in London in 1963 and studied at the Royal College of Art, London. Associated with a generation of celebrated British artists who emerged in the late 1980s, Emin is known for making works that convey experiences and events from her own life by using a range of media, from needlework and drawing, to sculpture, writing and installation

Emin's unmade bed artwork was bought by the Duerckheim Collection, and it is now on loan to Tate for 10 years.

Count Christian Duerckheim said at the time the work was bought: "I always admired the honesty of Tracey, but I bought My Bed because it is a metaphor for life, where troubles begin and logics die."

Tracey Emin and William Blake in Focus is a free-admission exhibition, curated by Darren Pih and will continue until September 3, 2017. Endit