Even though the museums guarding their precious property fence everything off, in my own studio, I made them so you and I could walk in and around, and among these sculptures.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
I love my sculptures, and I was lucky I had them for 50 years because no one would look at them, and I really liked having them around.
Some of our greatest historical and artistic treasures we place in museums; others, we take for walks.
Some time ago, we went to Asia and took a camera along, and I began to do what I'd done even years ago doing people. I couldn't get interested in it. And I did hundreds of photographs of details of the monuments as sculpture.
It's a lovely experience walking around a museum by yourself.
When I was a boy, I took over the shed at the bottom of the garden and displayed fossils and potsherds and coins in it and proudly called it my 'museum'. I charged people to come in, and my most prized possession was a Saracen shield dating from the Crusades.
The thing with sculpture is, 90% of the time, when I pass a piece of sculpture, it's in public or somewhere, and it's just, how inconvenient that that's there. It takes up so much room, and it's so oppressive.
I collect fantasy swords, replicas from films, and have them displayed on the wall as you go up the stairs.
What would I put in a museum? Probably a museum! That's an amusing relic of our past.
We say to the British government: you have kept those sculptures for almost two centuries. You have cared for them as well as you could, for which we thank you. But now in the name of fairness and morality, please give them back.
It's great, I guess, when your paintings are hanging up in a museum.