I try to make images that have the immediate presence we take for granted in objects - a chair, a shoe, a book, a Judd - and compose them like sentences.

When I was invited to go to Wuhan, I didn't know anything about it, so I looked up the Wikipedia about Wuhan. I discovered that part of Wuhan used to be Hankou, and then I realised that my great grandmother came from Hankou. My grandmother and father were both born in Hankou. Of all the places in China, it is the most amazing place to have asked for my exhibition. I needed to go back where my family comes from!

You can't honour someone by copying them or trying to be exactly like them.

In the period of '60s to the '90s, British art schools were small, and the number of student was small. The personal contact was great.

You can take things from the past, from the culture, from the immediate past and things that have not yet entered the culture, so they have no history yet. You can create your own context.

I came to painting through sculpture, to images through objects. I think that images sit in the middle, somewhere between objects and words.

'Understanding' art is like having a sense of humour - if you don't have one, no amount of explanation is going to make you laugh.