Jennifer Packer: The Eye Is Not Satisfied With Seeing: Serpentine Gallery

The exhibition draws out timely and necessary discussions on care, racial politics, representation, and art history, revealing   as one of the most significant artists of her generation. Before attending the exhibition, we were already drawn and intrigued by the exhibition name as it is a well-known bible verse (Ecclesiastes 1:8)

The body of work presented showed so much depth and emotion. Combining observation, improvisation and memory, Packer’s intimate portraits of friends and family members and flower still paintings insist on the emotional and physical essence of the contemporary Black lives she depicts. 

While the casual repose of her portraits is the result of her care for the sitters, Packer acknowledges her choice to paint figures as political, stating: ‘Representation and particularly, observation from life, are ways of bearing witness and sharing testimony’.

Jennifer Packer’s paintings recalibrate art historical approaches to these enduring genres, casting them in a political and contemporary light, while rooted in a deeply personal context. On occasion, Packer describes her flower compositions as funerary bouquets and vessels of personal grief; these paintings about loss are often made in response to tragedies of state and institutional violence against Black Americans.

Featuring 34 works dated from 2011 to 2020, the exhibition presented portraits of artists from Packer’s New York circle, monochromatic paintings, intimate interiors and flower still life’s 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.

I cannot recommend this outstanding exhibition highly enough. Hopefully, once we are finally let out this will be one to visit. As this is our first blog post we like to keep reviews straight to the point and usually let the photos do the talking. So, enjoy!

Lots of love x