Jennifer Packers paintings demonstrate great commitment from the artist and therefore demand slow, sustained attention from the viewer. Through this survey of work the exhibition draws out timely and necessary discussions on racial politics, representation and art history. The exhibition also includes drawings which for Packer are rarely just a study but hold a weight of their own that differs from paintings. ![]() A solo exhibition at the Renaissance Society, Chicago, in 2017 and her participation in the Whitney Biennial 2019 in New York, together with recent awards, have seen Packer become recognised as one of the most significant artists of her generation.įeaturing 34 works dated from 2011 to 2020, the exhibition presents portraits of artists from Packers New York circle, monochromatic paintings, intimate interiors and flower still lifes including Say Her Name (2017), painted in response to the suspicious death of Sandra Bland, a Black American woman who is largely believed to have been murdered while in police custody in 2015. This survey exhibition, the artists first in a European institution, includes paintings and drawings from the past decade alongside new work created in her Bronx studio over the last twelve months. Packer notes: The bouquets like Say Her Name highlighted something that's been true in my practice overall, which is this appreciation for observation and also understanding the emotional resonance of the things, the spaces in which we exist and around the people that we care about, whether we know them or not. These paintings about loss are often made in response to tragedies of state and institutional violence against Black Americans. Packer describes particular flower compositions as funerary bouquets and vessels of personal grief, revising the traditions of Dutch sixteenth-century vanitas paintings, which historically symbolised the transience of life. Her paintings, often worked on over extended periods of time, combine formal rigour and skill with emotional intimacy, and reward sustained and attentive looking. ![]() Characterised by a vibrant approach to colour and a powerful play of scale, Packers work layers, reveals and obscures her sitters through constant shifts between grounds and space, dissolving figuration into near abstraction.
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