In I Loved You Until the Morning, Tracey Emin transforms a fleeting emotional truth into a monumental declaration of light. Rendered in radiant yellow neon and spanning over four metres in width, the phrase unfolds across the wall with both intimacy and grandeur. The words feel handwritten in haste—urgent, confessional, and unfiltered—yet their scale gives them undeniable presence.

Emin’s neon works have long functioned as illuminated diary entries, merging autobiography with universal sentiment. By appropriating the visual language of commercial signage, she subverts its original purpose. Instead of selling a product, she reveals an emotional state. Her distinctive cursive script, bent into glass tubing, preserves the immediacy of handwriting; its loops and crossings retain the vulnerability of a private note made public.

The statement itself carries a quiet devastation. “I Loved You Until the Morning” suggests a love bounded by time—intense, perhaps consuming, yet ultimately transient. Morning implies clarity, awakening, or the end of illusion. In Emin’s broader practice, themes of desire, heartbreak, sexuality, and emotional volatility are recurrent. Here, love is presented not as eternal but as conditional, subject to the rhythms of night and day. The phrase acknowledges how passion can be both sincere and temporary.

The composition reinforces this tension. The words stretch and rise in varying heights, creating a sense of movement and instability. The scale—nearly two metres tall—engulfs the viewer, amplifying the emotional charge. The yellow neon emits a warm yet electric glow, casting soft halos onto the surrounding wall. The piece becomes atmospheric, shaping the space through illumination while heightening the psychological intensity of the message.

Issued in a small edition of three with two artist’s proofs, the work maintains the rarity and intimacy characteristic of Emin’s most sought-after neons. Despite its monumental dimensions, the sentiment remains personal, as though addressed to a single absent figure.

In I Loved You Until the Morning, Emin once again distils complex emotional experience into a simple, piercing sentence. It is a work about the fragility of love and the inevitability of change—about the way feeling can burn brightly through the night, only to shift with the first light of day.