Geoffrey Farmer – Let’s Make the Water Turn Black, FEBRUARY 18–APRIL 10, 2011
Geoffrey Farmer Let’s Make the Water Turn Black February 18–April 10, 2011
REDCAT, Los Angeles, USA
Regarded internationally for his cumulative, research-based projects, Farmer creates context-specific sculptural works that grapple with his longstanding interest in the relationship between art objects and theories of drama and dramatization. In doing so, Farmer mines a diverse array of literary and artistic histories to reveal the pervasiveness of theatricality within cultural experience. Rather than adhere to the convention of exhibitions as static displays, Farmer reconstitutes the gallery space as a site for improvisation, movement, alteration and accumulation.
For this exhibition, Farmer transforms the Gallery at REDCAT into both studio workshop and theatrical space where an assembly of performers and mechanized objects act out a scripted narrative in the form of a sculptural tableau. Starting mid-February, Farmer is in residence to work on-site and create a new site-specific “sculpture play” titled Let's Make the Water Turn Black in response to the region's social history and Los Angeles' influence on the counter-cultural movement. The exhibition begins on February 18 with a series of discrete installations on an architectural façade built to separate the central gallery from the REDCAT lobby. These revolving installations act as a prelude to the first public presentation of Farmer’s sculpture play on March 5, 2011, when visitors are invited to enter the central gallery space for the first time.
Geoffrey Farmer (b. 1967) currently lives and works in Vancouver, British Columbia. Recent solo exhibitions have taken place at the Walter Phillips Gallery, the Banff Centre; the Museo Experimental El Eco, Mexico City; Catriona Jeffries, Vancouver; Witte de With, Rotterdam; the Drawing Room, London; and the Power Plant Gallery, Toronto. In 2008, a mid-career retrospective of Farmer's work was mounted at the Musée d'art contemporain in Montreal. Notable group exhibitions include The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn at CCA Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts, San Francisco; The World as a Stage at Tate Modern, London and the ICA Boston; as well as the 2008 Brussels Biennial and the 2008 Sydney Biennale. Farmer will also participate in this year's Istanbul Biennial and will have a major solo exhibition at the Vancouver Art Gallery, Canada in 2013.
