Alien Sex Club: John Walter Artist’s Talk
Friday 30 October 2015, 18.00 – 19.00
Free, booking required
Artist John Walter talks about Alien Sex Club, a multimedia visual art project which explores the relationship between visual culture and HIV today. The aim is to provide audiences with a new vocabulary for understanding and talking about HIV and the factors contributing to its transmission. Alien Sex Club also involves artists and HIV specialists, clinical academics and scientistsworking together on three collaborations presented as live events on three consecutive Saturdays.
John Walter (born 1978, Dartford) works in a range of media including drawing, painting, performance, video, music and sculpture. His installations are grounded in theoretical and empirical research, and they seduce visitors into engaging with complex and often uncomfortable subjects such as sexual health through his exuberant use of colour, humour and hospitality. Walter creates fictions that begin with his personal experience and quote the voices of others, weaving them together into new epic works. The term ‘Maximalist’, which best describes his work, refers to an additive practice that values the relationships between things rather than their qualities in isolation. Walter’s work is visually intricate, returning to specific lexicons of imagery such as tarot cards, which allow meanings to develop within multiple contexts.
Alien Sex Club also involves artists and HIV specialists, clinical academics and scientists working together on three collaborations presented as live events on three consecutive Saturdays.
Walter’s accompanying exhibition is open to the public 30 October to 1 December at Camp & Furnace curated by Ellen Mara de Wachter as part of Homotopia 2015
Related events:
Sat 7 Nov, Alien Sex Club Event: Frances Disley – taking place at Bluecoat
Sat 14 Nov, Alien Sex Club Event: Mark Scott-Wood – taking place at Bluecoat
Sat 21 Nov, Alien Sex Club Event: Susannah Hewlett – taking place at Camp & Furnace and live streamed at Bluecoat