Calendar

Vancouver-based artist Geoffrey Farmer’s elaborately layered installations have taken inspiration from sources as various as Life magazine, Walt Whitman, and Frank Zappa. Returning to SFAI for the first time since attending in the early 1990s, Farmer is currently preparing to represent Canada in the 2017 Venice Biennale. Farmer's recent tour de force Leaves of Grass (2012), a major installation which assembled a monumental (124-foot-long) historical menagerie of clippings from vintage Life magazines, earned significant acclaim at dOCUMENTA (13).

Recent solo exhibitions include The Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston (2016); How Do I Fit This Ghost in My Mouth, Vancouver Art Gallery (2015); Let’s Make the Water Turn Black, Pérez Art Museum Miami (2014); Hamburg Kunstverein (2014); Migros Museum für Gegenwartskunst, Zurich (2013); Nottingham Contemporary (2013); Every day needs an urgent whistle blown into it, Art Gallery of Ontario (2014); The Grass and Banana go for a walk, Catriona Jeffries, Vancouver (2014); Fondazione Morra Greco, Naples (2013) and The Surgeon and the Photographer, Barbican Centre, London (2013). He has also had solo exhibitions at REDCAT, Los Angeles (2011); Walter Philips Gallery, Banff (2010); Musée d'art contemporain de Montréal and Witte de With, Rotterdam (2008); The Drawing Room, London, UK (2007) and the Power Plant, Toronto (2005).

Recent group exhibitions include Objects do things, Centre for Contemporary Art Ujazdowski Castle, Warsaw, Poland (2016); A Brief History of the Future, The Louvre, Paris (2015); Luminato Festival, Toronto (2015); Steirischer Herbst Festival of New Art, Graz, Austria (2015); Shine a Light, National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa (2014); Puppet Show, Eastside Projects, Birmingham (2013); Triennale der Kleinplastik, Stadt Fellbach, Germany (2013); dOCUMENTA (13) (2012); Stage Presence, SFMOMA, San Francisco (2012); The Garden of Forking Paths, Migros Museum für Gegenwartskunst, Zurich (2011) and the Istanbul Biennial (2011).  

https://catrionajeffries.com/artists/geoffrey-farmer

Press Coverage

Sebastian Smee, “Geoffrey Farmer’s art at the ICA: Once you’ve seen it, you can’t shake it,” Boston Globe, April 14, 2016

Marsha Lederman, “Geoffrey Farmer’s brave new World at the Vancouver Art Museum,” The Globe and Mail, June 12, 2015

Geoffrey Farmer will Represent Canda at 2017 Venice Biennale,” Artforum, December 11, 2015

Terry R. Myers, “Geoffrey Farmer: Let’s Make the Water Turn Black,” Art Review, October 2013

Laura Cumming, “Geoffrey Farmer: The Surgeon and the Photographer; Marcel Dzama: Puppets, Pawns, and Prophets – review,” The Guardian, April 6, 2013

Kristen Swenson, “Geoffrey Farmer,” Art In America, June 25, 2011