The symbol of the bull is seen throughout history, from Palaeolithic depictions of the auroch, to the Minotaur of Greek myth, to the Charging Bull sculpture as Wall Street’s metaphor for the market. For over a decade, Jenna Packer has utilised the bull to represent structures that shape the lives of people – social, political, religious and economic.

In environments reminiscent of early colonial landscapes by Charles Heaphy and Augustus Earle, there is a collision of the past, present and a mysterious future that unfolds within the same space. Elements of Greek and Roman classicism and high Victorian-era industrialism, swarm with the incessant activity of hundreds of tiny figures. Is the atmosphere one of festivity, or foreboding?

Packer asks, are we able to recognise the symbols we have, ourselves, constructed, and that have come to tower over us? In her paintings history is never linear, and it’s unclear whether the bull monuments are monoliths built by speculative future societies, or totems encountered in an imagined past. Nonetheless, her work alludes to the power that symbols have in shaping societies, and how they accrue meaning across time and context.

Main image: Jenna Packer, Furnace, 2017, acrylic on canvas. Image courtesy of Milford Galleries Dunedin.

Left image: Jenna Packer, Bread and circuses, 2013/14, acrylic on canvas. Private Collection of Marjan Lousberg. Image courtesy of Milford Galleries Dunedin.