By Peter Aspden

"His first major purchase was a sculpture by the German artist Rebecca Horn at the Cologne art fair in 1993 ('I was an early victim of art fairs, which I stopped being quite early in my collecting career,' he says wryly). I ask what turned him towards collecting contemporary work, rather than anything more traditional, and he says it was the way in which it asked itself questions: 'What is art, how can it be useful, how can it be pleasurable? Does it or does it not impact on society, or foresee what will be happening, or drive something? I don’t know the answer, but it is an exciting process.'"