London-based artist and PhD candidate John Walter talks about:

From the U.K, his romanticized version of the U.S. vis-à-vis New York and its high-'80s art boom; and he tries to reconcile the work of some of his early heroes, particularly Julian Schnabel, vs. their oversized egos and macho bluster, while dismissing most of his countrymen (Freud, Auerbach, etc.) for being 'bad' for the wrong reasons; his PhD thesis, relating to HIV/AIDS in relation to visual art and 'maximalism,' and as manifested through his interactive installation Alien Sex Club, which looked at the social aspects of 'cruising' in both analog (gay bath houses, cruise mazes) and digital (Grindr, etc.) forms, through his maximal aesthetic applications; his former apartment Tandoori Cottage, which took on a maximal aesthetic along the lines of some of his work, and how it was something of an experiment in collapsing the divide between work and life; his PhD program, which was in architecture, and which allowed him to produce Alien Sex Club as well as a book of symbiotic writings, and how getting the PhD has been part of his need to diversify to get by as an artist, an artist as "nomadic jester";  how after returning from Skowhegan in 2012 he was completely broke, had to swallow his pride and take a job at a book shop as part of that recovery, a big wake-up call that led him to the PhD program, part of his new era of strategic decision-making; the flat he and his partner bought in London to get out of market rent; how he's leveraged grant opportunities to help support himself largely by accessing subject matter outside of visual art (mainly virology); his being an 'interloper' in virology, as part of his Alien Sex Club project and his Capsid project, which forces him to acquire a whole new knowledge-base in science; how he takes a very often dry sensibility (virology, science-as-art) and makes it 'wet' for an art audience; how despite making a lot of 'gear' (artworks), the commercial galleries he's worked with haven't worked for him, and how he's taken the reins for his work as opposed to waiting for his work to be 'ordained'…and so the market will come later; that galleries tend to trade on the artist's credentials, rather than their own credentials; the logistics of running his studio/office space, which is just five minutes from his flat, by wearing multiple hats in the same space; how he uses 'telly' (TV) as a way to switch off his brain; and we discuss art openings and forming relationships in the art world, in the context of the 'hospitality' component of his many installations/performances, promoting a form of welcoming interaction that tends to run counter to what actually goes on at an opening, and how he advocates finding ways into the community through folks that you 'get on with.'