I have been drawing since I was a kid. It was my first creative outlet before I discovered the other possible ways of making art. I returned to drawing in a big way about 10 years ago after I first left art school. My practice has evolved in a more complicated direction, involving a lot of historical research, which usually ends up in performances, installations and videos but I find that drawing is still a necessary part of the process.
Drawing is fantastic because it is a cheap and immediate way of making work. All you need is a pencil and a piece of paper. When I first left art school I wanted to make films, but I had neither studio nor money so I made comics instead. In my mind I was making cheap films – I was using a cinematic visual language on the page, exploring narrative, mis-en-scène and how words and images relate to each other.
One of my first influences was the work of Öyvind Fahlström, a Swedish artist who died in the early 1970s. He used comic book imagery, because he wanted to make artwork that everyone could understand. I am interested in this idea – most people do understand the imagery and the basic repertoire of signs and symbols used in comic books. Fahlström also wanted to create an alternative distribution network for art works so that the public would be able to buy them as multiples at a cheap price, in the same way as they would buy a record. I was very keen to find a way to distribute my work outside of museums and galleries, and comics made this a possibility.