Tracey Emin, David Shrigley, Sam Taylor-Johnson and more talk us through the posters they’ve made for Team GB – and what the Olympics mean to them

‘I screamed my head off during the London Games’

Tracey Emin, True Love Always Wins

It’s great when art and sport come together. As an artist, I felt part of London 2012: when a print I made was selected to represent Team GB in the Paralympics, I felt very proud – and I screamed my head off when [track athlete] David Weir won gold. Rio may not be as close to my studio as the Stratford Olympic park, but I’ll be willing Team GB on. And my print will be telling everyone: “True love always wins.”

‘Artists tend to be non-sporty dweebs’

David Shrigley, Life Is Fantastic

This was a curious commission, given the constraints that surround the Olympic symbol – namely, the fact that you’re not actually allowed to use it. Well, maybe you can’t make direct reference to the rings, but fine art is all about being oblique, so I decided to take the Olympic torch and turn it into an ice cream.

I like the notion of the Cultural Olympiad. Artists tend to be a bunch of non-sporty dweebs so it’s nice to be involved somehow. I did one or two things for the London Games. I think I designed some mugs or something.

The Olympics is one of those things you just end up watching. I’m never enthusiastic to start with, but then I get hooked. The other week, I was watching that documentary about Danny Boyle’s opening ceremony and it took me back: 2012 was a big year for me too, as I had a huge show at the Hayward. But time goes past like an egg yolk down a plughole.

‘It’s actually about my new life in California’

Sam Taylor-Johnson, Wanderer Above the Sea of Dreams

I’ve been working on hand-cut collages for a year now. It’s just been me sitting there in my studio, quietly working away with my scissors, enjoying the first time I’ve had to myself since finishing Fifty Shades of Grey. I needed something meditative. I wanted to be creative and answer to no one else.

Although there are elements that link this print to my old work, it’s really about my new life in California. The guy on the rock could be in Rio, but the photo was actually taken in the Joshua Tree national park. I went camping there and took pictures of various rocks while out on walks or drives. It’s a very spiritual place, Joshua Tree. It feels very wild and at the same time very still, which I really like, or really need – or really needed after Fifty. That silence.

I hike to my new studio in the California hills. That sounds so romantic, I know, and it is. So there are lots of natural elements in this picture, vegetation and trees and things. The balloons are the Brazilian flag, of course, and I thought a big rock could be a solid foundation for someone wanting to fulfil their dreams.

There will always be a place for the Olympics: that time to stop and watch people achieve incredible feats. I became quite obsessed with the swimming last time round.

‘The words could also describe group sex’

Eddie Peake, Sweat

Ever since I was a child, I have loved the Olympics, especially in the evening when the lights of the stadium shimmer off their perfect superhero bodies, all glowing with sweat. The text in my print is a literal description of watching athletes do their thing from the vantage point of your sofa. Of course, the words could also describe group sex – or a nightclub, say, that has a safe space for behaviour not permitted in everyday life. Bodies rubbing up against each other, hot, sticky and sweaty.

Rio is going to be a bitterweet experience. The world is so fucked up right now and Brazil seems like a microcosm of that, with all the politics and the health risks that are being reported. I saw an article the other day about how they have been finding dead bodies and raw sewage in the water where people are going to be swimming. Wow! It makes you think: how is this even going to work?

‘It’s the residue of a performance’

Anne Hardy, Reflection

I built this in my studio, using salvaged material, round mirrors, ropes and balls. It’s meant to suggest a place of action, the residue of performances, exercises or games. I think of my photographic works and installations as “head spaces” – physical representations of psychological states. They may seem peripheral, but they’re a metaphor for something within us.

• Additional research by Razan Fadayel. The official limited edition prints for Team GB at the Rio Games are available from countereditions.com.