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

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.

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!

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.

The art world, of all worlds, has room for everyone.

It's important for me to give each thing the possibility to speak and also to allow artworks speak to each other.

If things are too similar, the dialogue is not very interesting. If you put in contrast, big and small, abstract and representational, you set up the possibility of a discourse.