Joe Packer
Joe Packer’s recent paintings could be described as invented landscapes with a psychological element. These paintings try to evoke memories of places, but at the same time, they have evolved through making processes that are not preplanned or prescriptive, creating paintings that aim to function as self-contained worlds, constructed objects with a kind of inner life of their own. Not reflecting the landscape, but recreating it. The paintings occupy a kind of hinterland between abstraction, where the brushstrokes are non-referential, and figuration, where the forms and spaces depicted allude to landscape, without being overtly descriptive.
Joe Packer was awarded the Contemporary British Painting prize in 2018. Recent exhibitions include ‘Dialogues’ curated by Alastair Hicks at the London Art Fair 2020, ‘Its Gonna Rain’ at Coombs Contemporary, London 2019-20, ‘Supernature’ at Auxillary Space Middlesbrough, and Rye Creative Centre Rye, 2019-20 and the Contemporary British Painting Prize Exhibition, Menier Gallery, London, 2019, and Huddersfield Art Gallery, Yorkshire, 2018. He studied painting at the Royal College of Art 1992-94 and Norwich School of Art 1989-92. He lives and works in St Leonards, East Sussex.