I decided I should use the most obvious colours - the basic colours with simple names: red, purple, yellow, pink. I don't distort the objects, I don't change the objects, I draw them exactly as they are. I do the opposite with the colours.

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.

I thought the objects we value least because they were ubiquitous were actually the most extraordinary.

In a sense [Joseph] Albers was an authoritarian teacher. He had rules about most things and very definite ideas.

I wanted to make new works of very contemporary objects, which I thought was interesting because many of them are manufactured in China, but these objects are universal, they go across all languages, all cultures.

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

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.