Lubaina Himid

I mean, they were a very worthy and brilliant set of judges.

And I think they would say, no, that's not what we were doing.

But I think that, yeah, I was ready to win it at 49.

You know, I made naming the money when I was 49.

I should have won it when I was 49.

To the art and cultural historians who cared enough to write essays about my work for decades, thank you.

You gave me sustenance in the wilderness years.

Thank you, Susan, for never allowing me to give up or throw away my work.

And I think I thought, to hell with prizes, I'm just going to keep going.

But I was always very aware of those sorts of prize things, but I had no comprehension whatsoever how any of it worked.

I was sort of disconnected from that.

And I think that helped because I just kept making work, but never thought that I would win it because I was very aware that you had to be under 50.

What I won the Turner Prize for was a series of three exhibitions that were all on at the same time, some of which were kind of surveys of work that I had made decades before.

So in order to show what it was I'd won the prize for, the curators decided they would show old work.

which was awkward for me, and also because I don't really like survey shows.

I like shows where I'm making new work.

Yeah, absolutely.

I'm not quite sure, actually, how you do it.

The way that I did it was to think, this is just another show.

I had about a year to make it.