TRACEY Emin's ­controversial My Bed modern artwork has sold at auction for £2.2 million.

The 1998 work, which features an unmade bed and a littered floor including empty vodka bottles, cigarette butts and discarded condoms, went under the hammer at Christie's in London.

The Turner Prize shortlisted work had been put up for sale by millionaire art collector Charles Saatchi, with a guide price of between £800,000 and £1.2m.

Emin was in the packed auction room as the work was sold, to applause from the crowd. Saatchi, who paid £150,000 in 2000 for My Bed, one of the key works of the Young British Artist movement, sold it to support the work of the Saatchi Gallery Foundation.