Tracey Emin in Hong Kong: exclusive preview reveals why she married a stone, why she wishes she was a Roman

The instructions were clear: if media wanted to partake in the Q&A with British artist Tracey Emin, they’d have to go see her work in both the Lehmann Maupin and White Cube galleries first.

It is the first time Emin has exhibited her work in two galleries in a solo show called I Cried Because I Love You in Hong Kong – or rather, as the press release states, “Greater China” – and coincides with Art Basel from Tuesday to Saturday.

At the first gallery in Pedder Building, about 20 journalists showed up, many in the requisite arty outfit – skinny trousers and pointy shoes – and invariably in black.

There is a sequence to the pieces that were inspired by a large stone just outside Emin’s studio in the south of France. She apparently had a wedding ceremony to marry the rock – but more on that later.

The series of paintings, drawings and embroideries reveal intimate relationships in various poses, some looking like fast sketches of a female body, the face deliberately covered up in paint strokes in gouache on paper, others large canvasses that seem like random brush strokes in acrylic. There is a handwritten message declaring her love for someone, and the title of the show lit up in neon.

When I asked Alexandra Dugdale, director at Lehmann Maupin and Irene Bradbury of White Cube how the art work was divided into the two galleries, they immediately replied that it was Emin herself who made the decision.