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`The Turner Prize shortlisted artists were announced in June. I'd already planned lots of other exhibitions for the next six months, so it was quite tricky to do them as well as a show at the Tate. The exhibition was due to open on 28 October and the prize would be announced on 2 December. I had to be incredibly disciplined just to make sure everything got done.

I made the decision to make only new work for the show - it made it much more challenging. I didn't have to do that - you're nominated for work you've made throughout the year but you don't know if the jury has seen all that you've produced - I don't think they had seen what I consider to be my two best exhibitions of the year. I was also nominated for my "exhibition making", my approach to putting together an exhibition, which I was flattered by.

Doing a show at the Tate for the Turner Prize is different to doing any other show in any other place. The fact that there would be more than 1,500 people there every day, and interacting with my exhibits meant that, in addition to everything else, I had to reconsider the way the work was produced to make it function for the sheer number of people. If you make something that people can sit on and you have 1,500 people doing that, then you have to be prepared.

The fact that it is a competition in one way compromised one of the three works I made, in that there was a restriction on sound levels which might have disturbed the other exhibits. I wanted the very low frequency Theremin sounds, which vibrate the whole chain of Superstructure, to be a lot louder.

The prize puts other demands on you, too: making a documentary portrait for Channel 4, who sponsor the prize; talking to journalists who aren't interested and want soundbites; also being in a competition affects your relationships with friends in the art world - I used to share a studio with Gillian Wearing, and suddenly we were supposed to be in competition. But the good thing about it is having an exhibition in London, at the Tate, where an enormous number of people will see what you've done, and that's great.

At the award ceremony, Gillian Wearing won. In the end it didn't matter to me whether I won or not - to do the show was the important thing - though it would have been nice to win for all the people who work with me and for the money. I don't think art is a competition, and the Turner Prize is just the choice of a few individuals - it hasn't had any bearing on how I think of myself or my work. But being in a show like the Turner Prize exhibition has given me great visibility, a lot of experience, and it's been very rewarding to see people activating the work.

I'm hugely relieved that the prize-giving part of the show is over. Now I'm working on a book, and I've got solo shows coming up in Zurich in April and Berlin in May of next year, for which I'm producing new work. I will be continuing the series of drawing machines. The one in the Tate is the first of eight. Also the band I'm in, Big Bottom (a five bass-guitar band) will be performing and releasing new material.' Interview by Scott Hughes

The Turner Prize exhibition continues at the Tate Gallery, London SW1, until 18 January 1998

Right `Superstructure With Satellites' and `Exit Seating' (from the Rules Series) on show at the Tate Gallery. Below, from left: 1. 16th October. At the Tate we used a wonderful infra-red machine to put up the text piece. It projects a level line on the wall, the only thing is you have to wear these weird red glasses to see it. 2. Self-portrait - taken at arms' length. 3. 17th October. Before spraying paint on to the wall in the exhibition I tested the pressure levels in this mini-garden, right in the middle of the Tate. It's now being built up to make more gallery space. 4. Spraying paint all over the `Exit Seating' text. 5. A drawing machine I made a few years ago, called `Luna Cosine Machine'. It's installed permanently in a restaurant called Coast in Albemarle Street, W1. I went there to check a few things before it was filmed for the Channel 4 programme on the Turner Prize. The loops in the drawing are made whenever someone goes down the stairs

Top row, from left, 17th-23rd October: 1. My friend Jules Mylius (right) and Harry, one of the managers of a Chinese restaurant called Canton. 2. The internal structure of the upright doughnut shapes for `Superstructure', which Jules helped me make. 3. An enormous quantity of three different types of filling material was used to fill `Superstructure': this is just some of it. 4. The filling had to be mixed in large buckets - I fell in the bucket. Bottom row, from left: 1. Zipping up the trunk-shaped inner filling bags - these pieces formed the arms that wrap around the doughnut shapes. 2. A detail of the inside: holes either side allow sound out. 3. The arms being fitted to the doughnut shapes. 4. An exhibition opening at Robert Prime, the gallery I work with in London: Anya Gallacio, underneath a piece of work by Liam Gillick, downstairs at the gallery

Below, from left, 23rd October: 1. Abigail Lane walking into the restaurant St John, in Clerkenwell, with a birthday present for my friend Sarah Lucas - a wax cast of one of Sarah's legs. 2. Angus Fairhurst and Sarah holding an enormous pepper pot - a birthday present from Cerith Wyn Evans and David Bussel. 3. I didn't have time to buy a card so Anya took two pictures of me and I wrote Happy Birthday on one of them. 4. 24th October. Opening exhibition of LEA Gallery, Hoxton Square. I made four video viewing systems and selected videos

Above, from left: 1. 24th October. I had my picture taken during the installation at the Tate by a photographer from the Independent. I took a photo of him, too. 2. 26th October. Terry Braun, director of the Channel 4 Turner Prize documentary. 3. Andrea doing the finishing touches on the text piece. 4. Mixing special ink that is used in the pen on the drawing machine at the Tate. Right, 28th October: Me and several members of my family at the opening of the Turner Prize Exhibition

Above, from left, 3rd-4th November: 1. Hotel room in Koln. 2.- 5. Installing work for a group show at the Kolnischer Kunstverein. Left, 5th November: Guy Fawkes night on my roof in London. Below, 6th November: remains of `Mother of Thunder' firework, thrown out of the window. Right: I broke the mirror

From left: Big Bottom, my five-piece bass guitar band, recording and being filmed for the Channel 4 documentary. 14th November: Mitch, from the band, helping me choose a pedal from the Bass Centre in Wapping

From left: 1. 14th November. Alex, son of my friend Mat Collishaw, trying to be scary and managing it. 2. 18th November. Students at Chelsea College of Art - I was about to give a lecture there. 3. 20th November. Gregorio Magnani, from Robert Prime, having a meeting. We had a lot to discuss

Left, 2nd December: 1. Bridget Riley signing a petition to keep free entry to museums. I signed it, too. 2. With Paul Griggs, my boyfriend

Below, 2nd December, evening: 1. Leaving the Tate after the Turner Prize announcement. 2. At the Atlantic Bar and Grill, with a friend, Russell Haswell. `It's the best thing that could have happened to you,' he said, `not winning'