Victoria Lucas and Andy Broadey approached me with the idea for this exhibition, having seen my work on Axis' MAstars, and being particularly intrigued with an assemblage called 'Pedro's Garden'. Thrilled with the space (a disused factory in Leeds) and the location, this was a fantastic opportunity to develop new work – both frightening and challenging.

The wasteground outside the disused factory was inspirational, and had a desolate feel to it – like a forgotten place. But then it was back home to Liverpool to start collecting objects and developing ideas. On first seeing the space, I'd decided to make a massive installation called 'Mount Magnolia', thanks to masses of tins of magnolia paint lying around waiting to be used, but this didn't happen. Then, playing with objects at home, a stool was going to be used and I took many photographs while experimenting with it.

The space is light and airy, and became my own little playground. Beginning work at the space, I came across a bunch of tyres, which were like a gift as there's a sculpture there already. The tyres were going to have to be a part of this.

The object decides what it wants to be, and this changes depending on the place - so it's one thing in Liverpool, and another in Leeds. Objects know what to do – paint knows how to drip – and it can be a matter of tuning into them and waiting to see what happens. This is combined with pushing objects to stand upright or stay in certain positions.

Found objects tend to be the main starting point for most of my assemblages and my approach to making this work was an intuitive one, responding to the materials to hand in a very direct trial-and-error process. I was led by the properties inherent in the materials as well as the associations that the objects suggest. This process involved testing and pushing the materials' boundaries, dripping, pouring and spraying paint onto their surfaces, drilling holes into them, collapsing and breaking them, thus imbuing mundane objects with an eerie, strange force and opening them up to the new interpretations.

Series: From the Hollow
I wanted to name the work after the Holbeck area and I discovered that the 'Hol' in Holbeck was derived from the word Hollow - meaning a sunken or low-lying area of ground i.e. the wasteground. The title refers to this location, especially the wasteground, but not in an obvious way.

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