New Yorker Ellen Harvey loves Margate. The Kent-born artist moved to the US when she was 14, but her family had spent many holidays at the resort. She told Lesley Bellew how she has connected JMW Turner with the present day to create Arcadia, her newly commissioned work for the Turner Contemporary, and how the finishing touches proved rather painful.

“Mum, you can be a Queen but first you must learn to walk backwards.”

These wise words from her three-and-a-half-year-old son Toby came a little too late – Ellen Harvey managed to damage an artery in her foot while shooting a video of the ocean as part of her commission for the Turner Contemporary.

As well as falling back with the camera, she was falling back in time – Coney Island was once home to a theme park called Dreamland (although it burned down years ago) and Ellen wanted to make this connection to Margate. It was a personal link between her past and present.

Fortunately, this was the last part of her work and she had the video in the can – all she had to do was put up with the pain as she travelled from Brooklyn to Margate to oversee the installation of her work last month.

She said: “As far as Toby is concerned I am Marilyn Monroe, Mother Theresa, maybe the Queen – he is at the age where 'mom’ is his world, but he’s growing up fast – and coming out with really funny observations.”

It may also be that Toby has his mother’s imagination and humour (she laughs a lot). When Ellen was young, her father, who worked in sales for Shell on London’s Southbank, would occasionally take her into the giant Shell Centre building.

In the basement there was a swimming pool and shops and a tunnel which ran between the Upstream and Downsteam buildings, through to a guest restaurant.

Ellen remembers going through the tunnel wondering if she would find gems and treasure.

She said: “It was so exciting. The tunnel was long and dark and full of mystery. I thought it was some kind of grotto.”

Ellen, who was born in Farnborough, Kent, and went to school in Orpington, says her father’s family would visit Margate to go on the rollercoaster and the big rides.

She said: “There are pictures of my grandma sitting on the beach with a parasol so I really feel a connection to the town. It was an enormous holiday destination and it is a memory thousands of us share. When I was invited to create an artwork for the gallery I was thrilled. I visited the town last year and spent time meeting lots of local residents.

“I was struck by the romance people have with Margate. It has all those past glories. Turner lived 'in sin’ with Mrs Booth and I got to think about whether he was really in love with her or in love with the view from her guesthouse. It was the best view in town.

“I also thought about his relationship with Margate – it was so interesting to try to see the town like he did.

“It was a scene of so many of his pictures so I decided that for my work I wanted to take today and reinsert it with the aesthetic of Turner’s day. I chose to replicate the gallery Turner created in London when he was in his 20s. He was obsessed with wanting to be the greatest artist that ever lived and what with his bequest to the Tate, his bid for immortality has really worked.” She is laughing again.

“I have built a simple shack as an arcadia by the sea. I spoke to Turner scholars and got the exact dimensions of his long-demolished gallery and I have made everything three-quarters of the size. I like the idea of people coming to the gallery to see another gallery and then they see Margate again.

“On the inside is an illuminated arrangement of mirrors, all to the same dimensions of paintings that were on Turner’s gallery walls. The mirrors have been engraved and together they show a 360 degree panorama of Margate as it is today, but etched with an 18th century engraving technique. I used a diamond point and scratched the surface – when you put a light behind the mirror it looks really beautiful.”

“When I arrive back in England this week I will be adding more mirrors before the opening on April 16. I want it to be even better. I want it to be fantastic – it’s a human condition, isn’t it, to keep wanting something to be even better?”

Ellen says the outside of her gallery talks about Margate as a pleasure beach and a six-foot Arcadia sign lights up like an amusement park illumination.

“I had it made in Chinatown, New York, and used the same font as the actual Dreamland signage so again there is a real connection.

“There is also a funhouse mirror, you know, one of those you find at a fairground. Visitors will also see my film of the sea (just before I fell over) on a screen outside the shack.

“My husband will come over with Toby a little later. It is not always so much fun for him while I am working. It can be confusing for him – when he sees my work in a gallery he asks why it has the paintings from our walls at home.”

Let’s hope Toby thinks Arcadia is fit for his Queen.

Ellen Harvey's installation Arcadia is part of the Revealed: Turner Contemporary Opens exhibition and runs from Saturday, April 16 to Sunday, September 4.