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.

There is a complete difference between art and the art market. Prices are high now for the simple reason that there are people are willing to pay them. The market dominates the art world today because at the moment collectors call the shots. Like everything else that won't last forever.

In the late 70's I started to make drawings of the ordinary objects I had been using in my work. Initially I wanted them to be ready-made drawings of the kind of common objects I had always used in my work. I was surprised to discover I couldn't find the simple, neutral drawings I had assumed existed, so I started to make them myself.

There is no doubt when one comes from the West to China one understands pop art as having originally developed as part of Western tradition. There is a historical development, in which things find resonance in different places.

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

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.

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