In this third and final installation of our interview with Rogue Wave artist Grant Stevens and L.A. Louver Gallery Director Elizabeth East, Stevens discusses his time spent in Los Angeles in 2007, and also reveals some of his personal “likes” and “dislikes."
His upcoming L.A. Louver exhibition "SUPERMASSIVE” opens Thursday, January 17th, 7-9pm. Stevens will also take part in an Artist Conversation at the gallery with writer and curator Paul Young on Saturday, January 19th at 11 am.
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Elizabeth East: What brought you to Los Angeles in 2007 and how long did you live here?
Grant Stevens: I first came to Los Angeles for a residency at 18th Street Arts Center in Santa Monica. The residency lasted for three months, and subsequently I spent about three years going back and forth between Los Angeles and Australia.
EE: What most surprised you about the city and how do you think it affected your work?
GS: The most surprising thing was the landscape and its relationship to popular representational conventions. I was fairly well prepared for freeways, driving and the climate, but no one told me that you could be standing on the beach watching surfers in one direction and see snow-capped mountains in the other. We see representations of Southern California almost constantly. Sometimes you’re aware that a film, television show, music video, photo-shoot or ad is set in LA, and sometimes it might just be set ‘anywhere/everywhere’. From spending time in Los Angeles you quickly realize that large swathes of our representational codes are contingent on the Californian landscape, urban and non-urban. It seems completely obvious, but the sunsets do look like the postcards. The palm trees do silhouette against the blue sky. Disney’s animated forests are filled with California redwoods. It’s understandable why Michael Douglas lost his cool under the stress of heat and traffic in “Falling Down.“ Fleetwood Mac songs seem to make a lot more sense and Neil Young’s “On the Beach” is tied to the PCH1. It was an uncanny and seemingly self-evident experience to recognize how such a spectrum of audio-visual material is based on real places, landscapes, images and experiences. This interface between popular representation and lived experience is still something that drives my practice.
EE: What is your favorite movie/Hollywood movie?
GS: Scorsese’s “Taxi Driver”.
EE: What are you currently reading?
GS: I just finished Don DeLillo’s first book, “Americana”.
EE; What is your guilty pleasure?
GS: Getting emotionally involved watching sport.
EE: What is you most analog activity?
GS: They play chanting through an iPod at my yoga class. Does that still count?
EE: What was your last music download? Will you use it in your work?
GS: I’ve been trying to track down Santo & Johnny recordings. I’ve made a work previously with “Sleepwalk” in mind, and "I want slide steel guitar gets me every time.”
EE: What is the most beautiful word in the English language?
GS: Donut. Actually, I’m not sure.
EE: What is the most beautiful (or extraordinary) word not in the English language?
GS: I’d like to answer this indirectly: I wish that we taught/learnt indigenous languages in Australian schools.
EE: What piece of technology do you wish was never invented?
GS: Leaf blowers. (Do you have them there [in Los Angeles]? They only seem to work around 7am.)
EE: Which word or expression do you most overuse?
GS: “I guess it’s kind of like…” I’d definitely like to reduce my use of “like” as a filler.
EE: What has been the greatest change in the art world since you were at art school?
GS: I think current students are much more ambitious and art-world-savvy.
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If you didn’t catch the previous interview posts, check out Part 1 and Part 2 on our blog!
IMAGES top to bottom: Video: Looking at Grant Stevens, produced by Jeff McLane, narrated by Elizabeth East, videos and images Courtesy of Grant Stevens; Grant Stevens, Outcrop, 2010, custom cabinet, veneer, lambda print, speaker components, 21.1 x 63 x 15.7 in. (54 x 160 x 40 cm); Grant Stevens, Me, the People (video stills), 2012, digital video, digital video frame: 12.4 x 9.5 in. (31.5 x 24 cm)