The identifying personal association with objects, which are not personal, is an important modern experience - our real association, the strands of our feelings about the objects that surround us. It's also because they are so familiar, we don't think of them as important in the world, but actually they are the world. We are living in a very material world.

For example, in England, we teach about Expressionism, but it is not the same in England as it is in Germany, because Expressionism is more important in the history of German art. So although it is the same history, the emphasis is different.

I think from an artist's point of view, everything in art, in fact everything in the world is available as material.

The viewer brings all additional information to the image.

The complexity of the language of images is disguised by the ease and rapidity with which we read them. I've tried to make work that is as transparent and simple as possible. No matter how much I strip away the result is always more complex to me than I expect.

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.

Art is more to do with observation than invention.