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.

It is very important to develop the thing that you are naturally good at, that you are truly interested in.

When I look at the objects that I draw, it seems to me so obvious about the contemporary world - these are our world.

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

You can't force yourself to be something you are not.

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

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.