Geoffrey Farmer – The Last Two Million Years

Farmer is well known internationally for producing large-scale mixed media works, comprising drawing, sculpture, photography and film that are characterised by their meticulous research and conceptual rigour. He creates structures that transform and activate the gallery space and its visitors, incorporating objects which are often in a state of flux. Specific literary or cinematic narratives anchor the projects, which are continually revised, altered and adapted from exhibition to exhibition, even within the same work. These multiple narratives are used to conceptually generate and contextualize the processes and materials produced, acquired and presented.

The new body of work made for Drawing Room takes as its starting point a book found lying on the street titled ‘The Last Two Million Years’. Published by Readers Digest, the encyclopaedia presents a description of the evolution of the earth leading up to the appearance of ‘Homo sapiens’ and the subsequent history of man from this time. Farmer uses the specificities of this chance starting point to tackle the larger themes of how we understand our existence in the world, how this is articulated through language and how this can have relevance to an individual.

The exhibition will tour to the Northern Gallery of Contemporary Art, Sunderland, 20 July – 15 September 2007 and then to Spacex, Exeter, 5 October – 1 December 2007.

Recent solo exhibitions by Farmer include Catriona Jeffries, Vancouver (2006) Power Plant, Toronto (2005) and Contemporary Art Gallery, Vancouver (2002).
Recent group exhibitions include Vancouver Art Gallery (2005), MuHKA, Antwerp (2005); Charles H Scott Gallery, Vancouver (2004) and Bluecoat Gallery, Liverpool (2003). He was included in ‘The Beachcombers’ curated by Drawing Room, which toured to Gasworks, London, Middlesbrough Art Gallery and Mead Gallery, University of Warwick (2002-03). Forthcoming exhibitions include The World’s A Stage, at Tate Modern, October 2007, The Musee d’art Contemporain, Montreal, January February 2008 and Witte de With, Rotterdam 2008. Farmer is represented by Catriona Jeffries Gallery, Vancouver.

The exhibition toured to SPACEX, Exeter, 6 October – 1 December 2007

The exhibition was presented in collaboration with the Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery, University of British Columbia.