Artist Geoffrey Farmer / photo Aubrey Mayer
Vancouver artist Geoffrey Farmer has won the $50,000 Gershon Iskowitz Prize for 2013.
The announcement was made this morning by the Art Gallery of Ontario, which will open a related solo exhibition by Farmer in February 2014.
Farmer’s installations have won increasing international renown in recent years. His Leaves of Grass, an installation consisting of cutouts from vintage Life magazines, was one of the key works at Documenta 13 in Germany last summer. Similarly, his installation The Last Two Million Years, consisting of cutouts from a discarded history book, is currently on long-term loan to Tate Gallery in London, UK.
The prize was initiated more than 20 years ago by Canadian painter Gershon Iskowitz.
In a release, Farmer said, “I’m deeply touched to receive this prize. Gershon Iskowitz has set an example through his generosity of spirit—a legacy that asks artists to support and help each other. I’m truly honoured.”
Farmer, born in 1967, has a forthcoming retrospective at the Vancouver Art Gallery in 2015 and his newly commissioned sculpture play, Let’s Make the Water Turn Black, is currently on display at the Migros Museum für Gegenwartskunst in Zurich.
He is also a graduate of the Emily Carr Institute of Art and Design.
Kitty Scott, curator of modern and contemporary art at the AGO, said that the February 2014 exhibition at the AGO will “offer visitors a chance to see the most recent workings of Geoffrey’s mind.”
