Oxford-born, Berlin-based visual artist Jesse Darling has just won this year’s prestigious Turner Prize. Previous winners include Damien Hirst, Tracey Emin, Rachel Whiteread and Anthony Gormley.
In accepting the award, Darling defended the importance of the arts, criticizing former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher for “paving the way for the greatest trick the Tories ever pulled, which was to convince the working people of Britain of study, self-expression and what the broadsheet supplements define as culture is only for certain types of people from certain socio-economic backgrounds.”
“I just want to say don’t buy into it, I’m talking to the public, I’m talking to the British public, don’t buy into it, it’s for everyone,” he added, before waving a small Palestinian flag.
When asked what he would do with the £25,000 prize money, Darling said he would “get a new tooth, pay my rent and buy my friends a drink”. The jury awarded Darling the art prize after praising his “use of art”. materials and everyday objects such as concrete, welded barriers, hazard tape, office folders and net curtains, to convey a familiar yet delirious world that evokes societal collapse, his presentation brings into play the perceived notions of labour, class, Britishness and power confusion.”
They also applauded his ability to illustrate “the underlying fragility of the world.” Darling beat artists Ghislaine Leung, Rory Pilgrim and Barbara Walker to the top prize.
So who is the award-winning, Slade-trained 41-year-old artist? Here’s everything you need to know about this year’s winner.
Darling was educated in London
He received his BA from Central Saint Martins and his MFA from Slade. He had initially studied at the Gerrit Rietveld Academy in Amerstand for a year before, as Darling put it, “they kicked me out for bad behavior”.
He won the prize for two exhibitions
Darling won the Turner Prize this year for his 2022 exhibitions, No Medals, No Ribbons, at Modern Art Oxford, and Enclosures at Camden Art Centre.
No Metals, No Ribbons explored how systems of power are vulnerable, just like bodies. Enclosures continued this exploration, looking at how vulnerability, usually associated with living things, can also be found in society and technologies.
“Darling suggests that all technologies, bodies and cultures are inherently fallible, but we continually imbue them with meaning to survive,” Artforum explained in 2018.
It has been exhibited around the world, including at the Venice Biennale and Tate Britain in 2019
Recent solo exhibitions also include Gravity Road, Kunsteverein Freiburg, Freiburg (2020), Selva Oscura, Galerie Sultana, Paris (2019) and La Friche Belle de Mai, Marseille (2019).
Other group exhibitions include Crip Time, Museum MMK für Moderne Kunst, Frankfurt (2021); Three, four trees, EA Shared Space, Tbilisi, (2020); A Fine Line, Kunsthalle Bremen, Bremen (2020); Transcorporealities, Museum Ludwig, Cologne (2019) and Body Splits, SALTS, Basel (2019).
The multidisciplinary artist typically uses inexpensive, everyday objects to create his work
“For most of my practice I’ve just used whatever was cheap or free and easy to find,” Darling told Modern Art Oxford in February 2022. “There is poetry in objects that everyone can recognize from their everyday life, as a shortcut to meaning. I am ambivalently drawn to petrochemical materials – steel and plastic, silicone.”
“These materials have, so to speak, produced my body and tell their own stories. You could say it’s autobiographical, but my autobiography isn’t just about me – it’s a story about the Fence Act, the Industrial Revolution, The British Empire, the Transatlantic Slave Trade, Henry Ford, Walt Disney, the World Wars, Mines and Miners’ Strikes, the Welfare State and its Dissolution, the Failed Sexual Revolution, Margaret Thatcher, Tony Blair, the Twin Towers, Brexit and Covid 19.”
Many of Darling’s pieces also touch on queer themes, using subtle references and symbolism. The artist, who is transgender, has previously said: “I don’t want to make the gesture of addressing the straight world from a queer place. I prefer the work to queer the viewer and not the other way around.”
Darling has also published a collection of poems, Virgins
Darling’s collection of poems, released in January, was described by critics as “sharp, perceptive and alert to both the nonsense and the beauty of life”, and a “beautifully irreverent thing”.
He’s done a lot of odd jobs over the years
“I’ve done just about everything for money, from music journalism to web copywriting, translations, circus clowns and sex work,” Darling told Rhizome magazine in 2012. The way I think about making and working and the conditions of work, or work in general, is very important to me. I have to admit that all of this has slowly and accidentally politicized me.”
“Not having a direct art school background, it took me a long time to figure out how to qualify art as work, and some of this art world shit is just so thin, full of thoughtless privilege and tired out-of-the-loop tropes that it doesn’t mean anything .Nowadays I don’t claim to be outside the circle, but I still struggle with things like that.’
What is the Turner Prize?
The Turner Prize is an annual arts prize awarded to “an outstanding exhibition or other presentation of their work in the previous year”. This year’s jury, chaired by Tate Britain director Alex Farquharson, included Wellcome Collection director Melanie Keen, Camden Art Center director Martin Clark, CEO and artistic director of Cromwell Place, Helen Nisbet.
Who else was shortlisted this year?
Ghislaine Leung, Rory Pilgrim and Barbara Walker were this year’s nominated artists.
Stockholm-born conceptual British artist Leung was nominated for Fountains, her solo exhibition in Simian, Copenhagen, which used objects associated with babies, such as toys and monitors, to ask questions about time, leisure and labour. “The jury particularly praised the warm, humorous and transcendental qualities that lie behind the sleek aesthetic and conceptual character of Leung’s work,” said the Tate Britain press release.
Multidisciplinary artist Rory Pilgrim was nominated RAFTS at Serpentine and Barking Town Hall, as well as a live performance of the work at Cadogan Hall. Pilgrim was praised by the jury for creating “beautiful and moving musical arrangements” that “brought light to the voices of their collaborators”.
Barbara Walker was nominated for the Burden of Proof at the international exhibition platform Sharjah Biennial 15. Walker’s presentation explored the impact of the Windrush scandal, delving deeper into racial identity, exclusion and power. The jury praised her ability “to use portraiture of monumental scale to tell stories of a similarly monumental nature, while maintaining a deep tenderness and intimacy across the entire scope of her work”.
Where can you see the work?
The works of the four nominated artists are now on display at Towner Eastbourne.
Turner Prize 2023, Towner Eastbourne, until April 14, 2024; townereastbourne.org.uk