Usually when I go to the Summer Exhibition, I think every room is too much the same, and I loose my capacity to look at individual works.

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.

I would never put a sculpture in front of a painting, so that it is difficult to see the painting. I always place each thing so you can see it isolated. You can focus on every individual work.

'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.

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!

I think the best approach is not to be too much like the thing that they are referring to, see it as a guide.

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