When I go to China I see many artists whose work reflects on aspects of contemporary popular culture but obviously the history of Western art is not part of their own tradition.

As an artist you are free to use any image, any style, any idea from any culture and any period of history.

In Britain the power of authority was weakened. There was much more individual freedom and there was great academic freedom.

The Royal Academy Summer Exhibition is very difficult to hang because it is so large and the quality is very varied. There are 1,200 works, an almost impossible number, some are interesting and some are not.

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

'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.

In the studio, it took me a long time to work out how to make paintings that had the intensity that I was able to create by painting whole rooms. There is a very limited number of colours but there are many variations. I decided to use the purest palette that I could.