Bio:
John Walter is an artist based in San Francisco, where he is currently artist in residence at Quantitative Biosciences Institute, but usually residing in London. His longstanding interest in infectious diseases and viruses of the mind has been manifest in projects including Alien Sex Club (2015), CAPSID (2018) and Jezreel’s Tower (2021). He works across a diverse range of media including painting, VR and installation.
John Walter answers our five questions…
I’m on a flight from London Heathrow to San Francisco International. It seems like a good time to reflect:
1 - Could you explain your practice? Only you know why you do what you do.
I draw. I gather phrases. I hybridise. I compress. I decorate. I transpose images between media and then feed the results back to the original process and hope for mutations. My practice is one of mulching.
I have a series of tastes and interests, which I have sustained, edited, and added to gradually over time. I enjoyed making art initially as a form of escape but what sustains this virus of the mind now is quite different. I want to rearrange the visual parts that I use in a surprising and new way. I am The Recombinator.
I was an artist before I went to art school but certain people that I encountered - tutors such as Brian Catling, Stephen Farthing, Jordan Baseman, and Bruce McLean but also students such as Edward Kay - annealed what I did; shaping it until, with more time, it took its current form. The work constantly evolves but the practice (its reptilian brain) is really one of the diarist who goes on to look at his user delusions from the outside and begins to see them as universals.
2 - Is art relevant today?
I’m not interested in the social function of art, only in the design space opened-up by the competition between memes, and the role that selective pressure exerts on them. All the conversation about identity politics is a sideshow. It’s not a question of whether or not art is relevant - art is obviously here - it’s a question of which memes need re-engineering to make them fitter for purpose, and how?
3 – We are always asked what other artists influence us, we want to know what art you don’t like, and which influences you?
I don’t like most art so let’s ignore that immediately, LOL. I like Carroll Dunham, Lari Pittman, David Salle. I like Rubens’ Samson and Delilah. I like Robert Longo. This is all really historic stuff in my self-loop; the story I tell myself about the origins of my work. I can re-edit these influences to an extent, but to pull too many bricks out of the intellectual foundation would be messy, would slow me down, and may just reinvent the same problems. I love what my friend Edward Kay is making. I find Ian Dawson’s entire practice inspiring. Meeting Bernard Cohen when we were curating Patternicity flooded my imagination with painting conversations. But art isn’t what most influences me at this very moment in time, it’s science. I’m interested in things outside art and in using “art” as a space within which to tinker using ideas from bioscience especially. The endless naval gazing of the art world is a parallel sideshow to the culture wars charade. It bores me.
4- If you could go back 10-20 years what would you tell your younger self?
20 years ago: get a day job ASAP and start a pension plan. I had been sold, and swallowed, the Kool-Aid that artists just live off their work, and that I was a heroic genius.
10 years ago: read The Breakdown of Will and Darwin’s Dangerous Idea. Understand that you are a user illusion, that the memes are competing inside and out of your body and brain for your attention, and that you can control your appetites. You need to think about it within a framework of inter-temporal bargaining.
To be honest I need to advise myself of a much younger age; 30 or 25 years ago: gay and artist are not synonymous. Learn to think rationally sooner.
It’s unlikely I would have listened. I was headstrong then and I’m still willful.
5 – If you could go forward 10-20 years what do you hope to have done or not done?
I’ve learned not to think like that. I’m not interested.
Kitaj said he wanted to retire. As a teenager starting out in art, I couldn’t fathom this. Now I can. The cultural lie that art is vocational infects the memeplex of the artist so much it becomes impossible to question it. Good for Kate Bush for ditching singing in favour of gardening.
Well, that’s one thought. Alternatively, can I make some more big leaps forward within the space I’ve created for myself to date? Certainly, being older is better; I’m less neurotic. I’m happier. I have more stability. But ultimately, I see art making as a bottom-up design process more than a top-down one. I’m emerging things out of the tinkering rather than aiming to arrive at a certain point. The challenge is to get better at catalysing the tinkering when it finds a good rhythm - harnessing it faster and harder. I strive to be a better detective on my own creative moves; allowing things to happen without getting in the way. Part of me would love to stop – to quit art! Unfortunately, I think a big part of how I think about myself is tangled up with being an artist and I’m not sure I will let that go. There’s the infuriating human nature of identity showing itself! But I’ve conquered other habits so perhaps there’s still time to rid myself of this one?!
My website:
www.johnwalter.net
Instagram handle:
@johnwalterstudio
Images:
1. Addiction, from Sydney Ducks NFT genesis collection, GIF, 2022. (screenshot)
2. Monkeypox, pattern swatch, from the Pox Patterns, 2022.
3. Director’s Mulch (still), 5’25”, HD video, 2022.
4. Prawn guards at the entrance to King Prawn’s pyramid, from Happy Crust, acrylic on canvas, 125 x 165cm, 2022.
5. Gizzard’s Eye, installation view, Commonage Projects, London, 2022.(screenshot)
Portrait credit:
Alexa Rocourt.