Fallen Fruit

Last updated
Fallen Fruit
07 FallenFruit SilverLakeMap.jpg
Fallen Fruit, Elysian Park, 2005
Born
Los Angeles, California, USA
NationalityAmerican
Known forContemporary Art
Notable work
Theater of the Sun (2019), Endless Orchard (2013-present), Public Fruit Jams (2005–present), Lemonade Stand (2013-present), Fallen Fruit Factory (2013-present)
MovementSocial Practice
Awards2013 Creative Capital Grantee, Emerging Fields; 2013 Emerging Fields, Muriel Pollia Foundation Awardee, 2013 Atlas Award
Website fallenfruit.org

Fallen Fruit is a Los Angeles based artists' collaboration composed of David Allen Burns and Austin Young. The project was originally conceived by David Allen Burns, Matias Viegener and Austin Young in 2004. Since 2013, David and Austin have continued the collaborative work installing public artworks and participating in exhibitions worldwide. Using photography and video as well as performance and installation art, Fallen Fruit's work focuses on urban space, neighborhood, located citizenship and community and their relationship to the public realm. [1]

Contents

History and Background

Taking their name from the book of Leviticus (Lv 19:9-10), Fallen Fruit began in 2004 as a response to a call by The Journal of Aesthetics and Protest [2] for artists' projects that addressed social or political issues but did so in the form of proposing a solution rather than raising a critique. In 2008, as part of their participation in "The Gatherers" show at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, the group embarked on a new long-term project called "The Colonial History of Fruit". Using a variety of media, this work examines both the objective or factual history of fruit – how the fruit we eat traveled through time and space to arrive in our daily life – and the subjective or anecdotal history: how and when an individual first tasted a fruit, or how a certain tree was tended by one family, or remembered by immigrants. [3]

Collaboration

Public Fruit Jam at Machine Project 15 FallenFruit PublicFruitJam MachineProject.jpg
Public Fruit Jam at Machine Project

Held several times a year, Public Fruit Jams are an open invitation to the "citizens" of the city to bring their home-grown or publicly picked fruit and join together in a communal jam-making session, using the term "jam" as a riff on both the food and the idea of musical improvisation.[ citation needed ]

Originally initiated in relation to a project with the Santa Barbara Museum of Art in 2013, Lemonade Stand, activates the phrase… “when life gives you lemons…” through public engagement. In his recurring project, participants are given glasses of organic lemonade in exchange for drawing a self-portrait onto a lemon with black marker and allowing their portrait to be taken. [4] Collectively the lemon self-portraits are meant to create new forms of "public" and temporary micro-communities that illustrate some of the archetypes of society through their varied forms. [5] [6] [7]

In 2013 Fallen Fruit created the Fruitique!, a collaborative, site-specific art installation, exhibition and retail space in conjunction with the Hammer Museum's Arts Re:STORE LA 2050 project. [8] [9] [10] [11]

Public fruit

Fallen Fruit first coined the term "public fruit" in 2004 in order to explore the concept of fruit found growing in or overhanging public space, especially after noticing how people were reluctant to pick or eat fruit found this way. They were struck not only by how few people eat this fruit, but by how few people walk on neighborhood streets at all; Los Angeles is a city of cars. [12] Fallen Fruit expanded upon this in 2013 with the opening of Del Aire Fruit Park, California's first public fruit park. [13] [14] [15] [16] [17]

This was further expanded in 2014, with the start of Urban Fruit Trail, the pilot project for Endless Orchard, Fallen Fruit’s global-scale public art project, which will transform often under-served areas with a network of public walking trails lined by fruit trees. In total, 150 trees will be planted in the MacArthur Park/Westlake region of Los Angeles, in collaboration with Heart of Los Angeles (HoLA), an urban youth outreach group. Once mature, the trees will bear gratis, year-round produce including plums, peaches, pomegranates, persimmons, lemons, limes, oranges and kumquats. [18] 30 of the initial trees planted in Lafayette Park were destroyed by vandalism in July 2014, but they were quickly re-planted thanks to generous donations by the local community. [19] [20] [21] [22]

Exhibitions

Publications and Press

Fallen fruit has been featured in LA weekly's Best of LA Art 2019, [26] 15 Los Angeles Artists to Watch (ARTNEWS, January 2019), [27] Artforum (Critic’s Pick); [28] The New York Times; [29]   LA Times, Conde Nast Traveler, [30] and LA Confidential. [31]

Images

Related Research Articles

Crenshaw Boulevard Major street in Los Angeles

Crenshaw Boulevard is a north-south thoroughfare in Los Angeles, California, that runs through Crenshaw and other neighborhoods along a 23-mile route in the west-central part of the city.

Charles Ray is a Los Angeles-based American sculptor. He is known for his strange and enigmatic sculptures that draw the viewer's perceptual judgments into question in jarring and unexpected ways. Christopher Knight in the Los Angeles Times wrote that Ray's "career as an artist…is easily among the most important of the last twenty years."

Nic Cha Kim is a Korean-American television reporter, documentary filmmaker, playwright, and cultural activist, also known as the Founder of Gallery Row in Downtown Los Angeles.

Zoe Leonard American artist (born 1961)

Zoe Leonard is an American artist who works primarily with photography and sculpture. She has exhibited widely since the late 1980s and her work has been included in a number of seminal exhibitions including Documenta IX and Documenta XII, and the 1993, 1997 and 2014 Whitney biennials. She was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2020.

Alexandra Annette Grant is an American visual artist who examines language and written texts through painting, drawing, sculpture, video, and other media. She uses language and exchanges with writers as a source for much of that work. Grant examines the process of writing and ideas based in linguistic theory as it connects to art and creates visual images inspired by text and collaborative group installations based on that process. She is based in Los Angeles.

Jeffrey Deitch American art dealer and curator (born 1952)

Jeffrey Deitch is an American art dealer and curator. He is best known for his gallery Deitch Projects (1996–2010) and curating groundbreaking exhibitions such as Lives (1975) and Post Human (1992). Deitch was director of the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (MOCA) from 2010 to 2013. He currently owns and directs Jeffrey Deitch Gallery, an art gallery with locations in New York and Los Angeles.

Ken Gonzales-Day American conceptual artist

Ken Gonzales-Day is a Los Angeles-based conceptual artist best known for interdisciplinary projects that examine the historical construction of race, identity, and systems of representation including lynching photographs, museum display and street art. His widely exhibited "Erased Lynching" photographic series and book, Lynching in the West: 1850-1935 (2006), document the absence in historical accounts of the lynching of Latinos, Native Americans and Asians in California's early history. The series has toured in traveling exhibitions staged by the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), Smithsonian Institution and Minnesota Museum of American Art, and appeared at the Tamayo Museum, Generali Foundation (Vienna) and Palais de Tokyo in Paris, among other venues.

Siri Kaur

Siri Kaur is an artist/photographer who lives and works in Los Angeles, where she also serves as associate professor at Otis College of Art and Design. She received an MFA in photography from California Institute of the Arts in 2007, an MA in Italian studies in 2001 from Smith College/Universita’ di Firenze, Florence, Italy, and BA in comparative literature from Smith College in 1998. Kaur was the recipient of the Portland Museum of Art Biennial Purchase Prize in 2011. She regularly exhibits and has had solo shows at Blythe Projects and USC's 3001 galleries in Los Angeles, and group shows at the Torrance Museum of Art, California Institute of Technology, and UCLA’s Wight Biennial. Her work has been reviewed in Artforum, art ltd., The L.A. Times, and The Washington Post, and is housed in the permanent collections of the National Gallery in Washington, D.C. and the University of Maine.

Cesar Garcia is a Mexican-born American scholar, writer, curator, and educator. He is the founder and current director and chief curator of The Mistake Room, in Los Angeles.

Elana Mann American artist

Elana Mann is a contemporary artist who lives and works in Los Angeles, California.

Public Fiction is a curatorial project and quarterly publication based in Los Angeles. It was founded in 2010 by Lauren Mackler.

Rafael Esparza is an American performance artist who lives and works in Los Angeles. His work includes physically exhaustive performances and installations constructed out of adobe bricks. Esparza often works with collaborators, including members of his family.

Sonia Amalia Romero is an American artist, she is known for her printmaking, mixed media linocut prints, murals, and public art based in Los Angeles. She is known for depicting Los Angeles, Latin American imagery, and Chicano themes in her work.

Jori Finkel is an American writer and editor who specializes in contemporary art. She is best known for analyzing the inner workings of the art market and for chronicling the Los Angeles art scene during its expansion at the beginning of the 21st century.

John Burtle is an American artist who works in performance, Public Art, sculpture, and broadcast media. The artist lives in Los Angeles, often changes the spelling of their name, and frequently works with in groups.

Lauren Bon is an artist who works with architecture, performance, photography, sound, and farming, to create urban, public, and land art projects that she terms "devices of wonder" to galvanize social and political transformation.

Lisa Diane Wedgeworth is an African-American visual artist, curator, and writer. Her work encompasses abstract painting, video, and performance works. She has been a teaching artist at several Los Angeles-area museums, including the California African American Museum, the Craft and Folk Art Museum, and LACMA. She earned her B.A. in studio art from California State University, Los Angeles, in 2002, and her M.F.A. in Studio Art from the same institution in 2014. In an interview with the magazine Curator in 2018, Wedgeworth cited childhood visits to the Barnsdall Art Park in the 1970s and 80s, and the Candice Bergen-narrated commercials for the Norton Simon Museum, as early influences. She also cites Lezley Saar, daughter of Betye Saar, as well as painter Suzanne Jackson and "outsider/self-taught artists." Wedgeworth's work is in the permanent collection of the California African American Museum.

Destination Crenshaw Open-air African American museum in Los Angeles, California

Destination Crenshaw is an under-construction 1.3-mile-long (2.1 km) open-air museum along Crenshaw Boulevard in Los Angeles, California, dedicated to preserving the history and culture of African Americans. The project includes new pocket parks, outdoor sculptures, murals, street furniture, and landscaping.

Steven Hull American artist and curator

Steven Hull is an American artist based in Los Angeles. His projects cross boundaries typically drawn between personal and collaborative work, disciplines like painting, sculpture and installation art, and artistic fields including writing, music, art, illustration, design and performance. In his personal work, he frequently creates immersive, multimedia tableaux and exhibitions that Los Angeles Times critic Christopher Knight described as "carnivalesque hybrids of painting and sculpture whose chief aim is to turn visions of the conventional world upside down." He often mixes opposing artistic styles, irreverent conceptual strategies, and tones that range from playful to alienated or politically pointed. His collaborations include several artist-writer publications, including I’m Still In Love With You (1998–9), Song Poems, and AB OVO (2005); he also co-founded the artist-run space La Cienegas Projects and established Nothing Moments Press, which produced and published "Nothing Moments" (2007), a set of 24 limited-edition book collaborations between writers, artists and designers. These projects have been presented at MOCA at the Pacific Design Center, Rosamund Felsen Gallery, and Festival Supreme, among other venues. Hull has received a Joan Mitchell Foundation award for painting (2009) and a Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation award (2001). He is married to artist Tami Demaree.

Tricia Ward American social practice artist

Tricia Ward is a Los Angeles-based artist whose work has included public and environmental art, sculpture, and social practice art. She emerged in the 1980s, when collaborations with underserved youth and urban groups that bridged art and social change began to gain institutional attention. Her work combines collaborative, interdisciplinary approaches that include physical transformations of derelict urban environments into "pocket parks," environmental remediation, cultural and educational programming, public policy and civic engagement.

References

  1. "Fallen Fruit Biography". Archived from the original on 18 February 2013. Retrieved 19 June 2013.
  2. "Fallen Fruit: A Mapping of Food Resources in Los Angeles". The Journal of Aesthetics and Protest. Retrieved 19 June 2013.
  3. Zack, Jessica (5 November 2008). "Exploring the history of fruit". San Francisco Chronicle. Retrieved 19 June 2013.
  4. "Fallen Fruit's Lemonade Stand". Current:LA. Retrieved 26 April 2019.
  5. "Lemonade Stand". lfla.org. Retrieved 26 April 2019.
  6. "Lemonade Stand: A public participatory project by Fallen Fruit". Hammer.ucla.edu. Retrieved 26 April 2019.
  7. Ridley-Thomas, Mark (14 July 2014). "Making Art and Jam with Lemons". rdley-thomas.lacounty.gov. Retrieved 26 April 2019.
  8. "Arts Re:Store LA" . Retrieved 26 April 2019.
  9. Dambrot, Dambrot (8 November 2013). "Arts ReSTORE L.A. and an Art-Based Economy". www.kcet.org. KCET. Retrieved 13 July 2014.
  10. Bender, Andrew. "Did Art Pop-ups Just Save This L.A. Neighborhood?". Forbes. Archived from the original on 14 July 2014. Retrieved 13 July 2014.
  11. Wagley, Catherine. "Hammer Museum Turns Westwood Into Silver Lake (But Only For a Month)". www.laweekly.com. LA weekly. Retrieved 13 July 2014.
  12. "Fallen Fruit: A Mapping of Food Resources in Los Angeles". The Journal of Aesthetics and Protest. Retrieved 19 June 2013.
  13. Brown, Patricia Leigh (11 May 2013). "Tasty, and Subversive, Too". NY Times. Retrieved 31 May 2014.
  14. Jennings, Angel (6 January 2013). "Park's makeover includes fruit trees for all to enjoy". LA Times. Retrieved 31 May 2014.
  15. Driggs, Janet Owen (2 April 2013). "Fallen Fruit and the 'Thin End of the Wedge'". KCET. Retrieved 31 May 2014.
  16. Chiao, Christine. "Fallen Fruit of Del Aire: L.A.'s First Public Fruit Orchard". LA Weekly. Retrieved 31 May 2014.
  17. Grossberg, Josh (4 January 2013). "Public fruit garden opens at Del Aire Park". Daily Breeze. Retrieved 31 May 2014.
  18. Bermudez, Esmeralda (8 July 2014). "L.A. youths planting plum trees and more in Urban Fruit Trail project". LA Times. Retrieved 12 July 2014.
  19. Bermudez, Esmeralda (8 July 2014). "Newly planted fruit trees in MacArthur Park uprooted". LA Times. Retrieved 12 July 2014.
  20. Suter, Lesley Bargar (10 July 2014). "Langer's Deli Helps Save the Urban Fruit Trail". www.lamag.com. Los Angeles Magazine. Retrieved 12 July 2014.
  21. Cota-Robles, Marc (10 July 2014). "Kids replant Wilshire fruit trees uprooted by vandals". abc7.com. abc news. Retrieved 12 July 2014.
  22. "Digging In At MacArthur Park: Kids Replant After Vandals Uproot Dozens Of Fruit Trees". losangeles.cbslocal.com. CBS LA. 10 July 2014. Retrieved 12 July 2014.
  23. "Fallen fruit: United Fruit". LACE. Retrieved 31 May 2014.
  24. "Fallen Fruit Presents EATLACMA". LACMA. Retrieved 31 May 2014.
  25. "San Fernando Road Concert Program" . Retrieved 19 June 2013.
  26. Dambrot, Shana Nys (2019-08-20). "Best of L.A. Arts: Fall Preview Pick: Fallen Fruit at the PDC Gallery". LA Weekly. Retrieved 2019-09-18.
  27. Maximilíano Durón; Alex Greenberger (9 January 2019). "15 Los Angeles Artists to Watch". Artnews.com. Retrieved 26 April 2019.
  28. ""Fallen Fruit of Atlanta" at Atlanta Contemporary". www.artforum.com. Retrieved 2019-09-18.
  29. Mishan, Ligaya (2018-11-29). "These Artists Are Creating Work That's About, and Made From, Food". The New York Times. ISSN   0362-4331 . Retrieved 2019-09-18.
  30. James, Sarah. "The 18 best exhibitions in London". CN Traveller. Retrieved 2019-09-18.
  31. "Ae546ue45tgdlos angeles confidential summer 2015". Issuu. Retrieved 2019-09-18.