The news is always insisting what is important: now. Then insisting a few breaths later, what is important: now. Innately, we know the news is not new, and that it needs our now, to make the news new. For example, on my screen a red lozenge appears and if I take it: 1 News Update. At precisely the same moment, almost undetected, my chair begins to glow as the morning light enters the room. It appears with such subtly, I can’t tell where it starts, or where it ends. When I look back at my screen, the lozenge has transformed: 2 News Updates.

What transforms me isn’t in the news, although the news can inspire it. It is easy to mistake news for knowledge and sometimes there is knowledge in the news. I have been in the news, and I know, that the now that becomes the news, is nothing the news can ever know.

It could be said, that there is more reporting going on now than in any time in history and that has led some to say that reporting is a commodity and journalism not. I think it is clear we need more of the later.

But yet drawing is my most important report of the day. It’s what stops me from going to the news to get my now.

I draw to observe and acknowledge the cell, the leaf, the thought, the breath and the feeling of now that never make the news.

Mudpuddlers, Corn Borers, Polymorphic Platyforms, opens on November 1st. This is the artist’s first exhibition to focus singularly on works on paper, highlighting an intimate and rigorous drawing practice which has long informed his diverse oeuvre.

Geoffrey Farmer (b. 1967, Vancouver) lives and works in Hawaii. His work has been exhibited internationally in solo exhibitions at venues such as the Canada Pavilion, 57th Venice Biennale (2017); Schinkel Pavillion, Berlin (2017); Salzburger Kunstverein (2017); The Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston (2016); Vancouver Art Gallery (2015); Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto (2014); Kunstverein Hamburg (2014); Perez Art Museum, Miami (2014); National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa (2014); Migros Museum, Zurich (2013); Mercer Union, Toronto (2013); Nottingham Contemporary (2013); Barbican Art Gallery, London (2013); and Witte de With, Rotterdam (2008). The artist has been featured in exhibitions at the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles (2018); Steirischer Herbst, Graz, Austria (2015); Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond (2015); The Louvre, Paris (2015); KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin (2012); dOCUMENTA (13), Kassel (2012); San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (2012); Kumu Art Museum, Tallinn (2011); Zabludowicz Collection Curatorial Open 2011, London (2011); 12th Istanbul Biennial, curated by Jens Hoffmann and Adriano Pedrosa (2011); and CCA Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts, San Francisco (2011). Farmer’s work is included in the permanent collections of CCA Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts, San Francisco; the Cleveland Museum of Art; Tate Modern, London; Vancouver Art Gallery; National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa; and the Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto.