Early thoughts on Angel City Eats from Jackson and Sienna De Govia

When Jackson and Sienna and I first discussed what they were going to do for their collaborative installation at the gallery, there were a number of funny and ambitious ideas tossed around.  After coming by to take very precise measurements of the layout of the gallery (still the best floorplans we have in our own records of the space, in fact), it was decided that they would go home, mull things over, and come back at us with an Official Proposal.  Recently, when writing out the show statement for our press release, I came back upon this great little dialogue between the two artists.  I asked their permission to share it online because I feel it gives a real sense of the conversation between the two of them as artists, and all that can happen when our usual tendency to shy away from the personal and familial in our professional lives is replaced by a desire to harness the power of those relationships and the multiple levels on which they can enhance our powers of expression. 

What the De Govias have created with Angel City Eats is intergenerational, familiar, intelligent, and a very funny and insightful measure of our cultural appetites.  It is also something that neither of them could have conceived alone.  

Though there are a few things in the Official Proposal that were not realized in the final exhibition (no large birds or cats or police helicopter pinatas), there are a number of additions that suprised the artists along the way.  I hope you enjoy reading their thoughts as much as I did.

— DKM

Jackson and Sienna stand in front of Con Woman at New Year’s on the evening of the opening.

Official Proposal for ANGEL CITY EATS

SIENNA:

Creepy food sculpture in walk-in dioramas…

JACK:

We look at LA through the prisms of vintage Dragnet and today’s Kardashian Reality.  The rectilinear aridity of Joe Friday’s matter-of-fact Los Angeles - “This is the City.  Los Angeles, California…” became Kourtney Kardashian’s flamboyant, vacuous paradise.  A cop doggedly collaring petty criminals while living on coffee and cigarettes, a self-made celebrity Princess who presides over, and perhaps is made of, really complicated eats that are bad for you:  what do these icons signify?  

We don’t know, but we’re coming at them through food.

SIENNA:

I view the edible object as a means for evoking an emotional response.  We all gotta eat, and food is problematic.  Especially in our fair city, no, in our whole country.  We are over-consuming to a massive degree and nearly everything we eat is artificial and heavily processed.  Some people view Los Angeles that way, artificial and heavily processed.    A place where a living breathing cream puff (Kourtney Kardashian) walks…  

JACK:

…the meaningless streets where Jack Webb once drove, caffeinated and nicotined.
After years (and years) of designing for the flat screen I’m fascinated by the possibilities of two dimensional objects liberated from their backgrounds and presented in planar layers.  Thus Sienna’s visionary sculptural edibles can be seen in subtly changing contexts.

SIENNA:

Truly, I make sculptures of food because it’s what I like to do.  As we start making things they will begin to tie together and make sense.

JACK:

We will set them in East Hollywood, our neighborhood, in venues we know and love.

SIENNA:

Some pieces I will make are:

3-D donuts with a sordid interior

tiny desserts on pins stuck into dolls (foodoo dolls!)

heavily weighted meat products

police helicopter pinatas spilling polymer candy

soft sculptures dusted in cocoa powder - perhaps the stuffed animals left at a roadside altar for the felled donut.

hot wax or coconut oil revealing objects suspended within Mexican votive candles at the altar

motorized marching boots on the sordid side of the neighborhood

JACK:

There will be cats, also, and maybe a few large birds.