‘We walked three kilometres into this Australian lake, to where the water was still only a metre deep. Then we set up the gas pipe – and waited until the air was really still’

During my student years I did very traditional black-and-white landscape photography. I spent time in the Himalayas, Patagonia and Tasmania and came back with pictures of grandeur – what is sometimes described as “the sublime”. But while studying art history, I suddenly realised all this had been done before. I was caught up in an aesthetic that had been current 150 years earlier.

I put my work away in a drawer but I held back about 10 images that I loved, spread them out, and asked myself: “What is the commonality between these?” And it was that they all had a sense of space and were heading towards the abstract. Then I wondered if there was anywhere I could work with space, and use it as my subject.