When I was a very young student I loved and admired the work of Sam Beckett, who is famously pessimistic, and whose writing is an extraordinary examination of emptiness. I wanted to be like Beckett. I don't have the same attitude toward the world, I'm naturally optimistic, and so of course I could never be like Beckett. You can't force yourself to become like someone you admire.

It's important for me to give each thing the possibility to speak and also to allow artworks speak to each other.

I look at the character of the exhibition and I treat it as I would a painting or an installation. When I did the Summer Exhibition at Royal Academy, I did it exactly as I would when making a new work.

In my early work I didn't use much colour. I had no confidence about how I could do this.

I think that the exchange is very important. Before I did the exhibition in Shanghai, I was a judge for the John Moores Painting Prize and that was very interesting for me, because some of the judges are Chinese and some are British, and we look at the work together. It was fascinating that most of the time we were in complete agreement, but some of the time we were not. People send their works from all over China. For a foreigner, this gave me a very good picture about what is happening in China and its art today.

I am trying to present objects in the simplest way possible, and I don't want to supply too much context.

For many years I hoped to have an exhibition in China, because of my family connection.