Geoffrey Farmer Receives Victor Martyn Lynch-Staunton Award

Geoffrey Farmer (92) was awarded a 2008 Victor Martyn Lynch-Staunton Award from the Canada Council for the Arts on December 16, 2008.

The annual awards, worth $15,000 each, recognize outstanding mid-career artists in the seven disciplines funded by the Canada Council: dance, integrated arts, media arts, music, theatre, visual arts and writing and publishing. The prizes were created using funds from a generous bequest made by the late Victor Martyn Lynch Staunton to the Canada Council.

Integrated arts artist Diane Borsato, set and costume designer Linda Brunelle, author Marlene Cookshaw, choreographer and dance artist Susanna Hood, filmmaker Shandi Mitchell and composer Michael Oesterle, rounded out the 2008 award recipients.

The seven Victor Martyn Lynch Staunton Award recipients were chosen through a nomination process by the Grants to Professional Artists peer assessment committees during the 2007 2008 fiscal year. The winning candidates are considered the most outstanding mid-career artists of those nominated.

Geoffrey Farmer - Visual Art
Born in British Columbia, Geoffrey Farmer lives and works in Vancouver. Through his studies at the Emily Carr University of Art and Design in Vancouver and at the San Francisco Art Institute, he developed a strong interest in the notions of process and narrative. His work is at once fragile and multiform, operating on the same level as everyday experience: simultaneously rational and chaotic, undeniably concrete yet shaped by the imagination. Mr. Farmer has seen his career take off meteorically in the last few years. In 2008 alone, he was the subject of a survey exhibition at the Musée d'art contemporain in Montréal, a solo exhibition at the Witte de With in Rotterdam, Netherlands, participated in the Sydney and Brussels Biennale as well as in group exhibitions at the Tate Modern, the ICA Boston and Johnen + Schöttle in Berlin. He is currently exhibiting at National Gallery of Canada in the group exhibition Caught in the Act: The Viewer as Performer which runs until February 15, 2009.

For more information regarding the Victor Martyn Lynch-Staunton Awards, please visit the Canada Council Website.