The illusion of life is crucial for the work, otherwise the ideas wouldn't be able to jump across, people wouldn't engage with it.

I don't want the ideas to be limited by what I can physically do. The ideas come first.

Materials are very important to me, and always have been.

Melbourne is a fantastic place to work, but it's not the centre of the world.

Most of the work I make uses materials that are a bit outside of the traditional fine art world.

The idea that we can have a new life form, what does it say about the zoo's main purpose, which is to preserve life? What does it say when the artificial and real animal can have the same attraction to people?

Skywhale is ambiguous. I think she is beautiful, but a lot of people think she is grotesque. You are drawn in and repelled at the same time, and it has to have that dynamic. My work has a certain element of abject mutation, uncertainty and darkness. Even she is dark - I mean she has ten breasts.