by 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 and criticized former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher for paving “the way for the biggest trick the Conservatives ever pulled, which was to convince Britain’s workers that the studio , self-expression, and what broadsheets describe as culture, is only for particular types of people from particular socioeconomic backgrounds.”
“I just want to say don’t buy, I’m talking to the public, I’m talking to the British public, don’t buy, it’s for everyone,” he added, before waving a small Palestinian flag.
Asked what he would do with the £25,000 prize, Darling said he would “get a new tooth fitted, pay the rent and treat my friends to a drink”. The jury awarded Darling the art prize after praising her “use of common materials and objects such as concrete, welded barriers, security tape, office files and curtains, to convey a familiar but delusional world that invokes social collapse, its presentation disrupts perceived notions of work, class, Britishness and power.
They also applauded its ability to illustrate “the underlying fragility of the world.” Darling beat artists Ghislaine Leung, Rory Pilgrim and Barbara Walker to take first prize.
So who is the Slade-educated 41-year-old award-winning artist? Here’s everything you need to know about this year’s winner.
Darling was educated in London.
He earned his bachelor’s degree from Central Saint Martins and his master’s degree in fine arts from Slade. She initially studied for a year at the Gerrit Rietveld Academy in Amerstand, before, as Darling said, “I was kicked out for bad behavior.”
He won the award for two exhibitions.
Darling won this year’s Turner Prize for her 2022 exhibitions, No Medals, No Ribbons, at Modern Art Oxford, and Enclosures at Camden Art Centre.
Without Metals, Without Tapes analyzed how power systems are fragile, like bodies. Enclosures continued this exploration, examining how vulnerability, which is often associated with living beings, can also be found in society and technologies.
“Darling suggests that all technologies, bodies, and cultures are inherently fallible, but that we continually infuse them with meaning to survive,” Artforum explained in 2018.
He has exhibited around the world, including 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 usually uses everyday and inexpensive objects to create his work.
“For most of my practice, I used what 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 in their daily life, like a shortcut towards meaning.” “I am ambivalently drawn to petrochemical materials: steel, plastic and silicone.”
“These materials have produced my body, so to speak, and tell their own stories. You could say it is autobiographical, but my autobiography is not just about me: it is a story about the enclosure law, the industrial revolution, the El 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 address 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 heterosexual world from a queer place. I would prefer that the work interrogates the viewer and not the other way around.”
Darling has also published a poetry collection, Virgins
Darling’s book of poetry, which was published in January, was described by critics as “spicy, incisive and alert to both the shit and the beauty of life,” and a “beautiful, irreverent thing.”
He has done many odd jobs over the years.
“I’ve done almost everything for money, from music journalism to web writing to translations to circus clowning to sex work,” Darling told Rhizome magazine in 2012. “And while those things aren’t important in their specificity, they are. “. They are important in how I think about creation, work, and the conditions of work, or work in general. “I must admit that, slowly and accidentally, all this has politicized me.”
“Not coming directly from art school, it’s taken me a long time to figure out how to qualify art as work, for example, and some of this art world shit is so rarefied, full of thoughtless privilege and tired tropes. That’s not “It means nothing outside the circle. Nowadays I don’t pretend to be outside the circle, but I still struggle with those things.”
What is the Turner Prize?
The Turner Prize is an annual art prize awarded for “an exhibition or other outstanding presentation of your work during 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, and executive director 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 shortlisted artists.
Leung, the Stockholm-born British conceptual artist, was nominated for Fountains, her solo exhibition at Simian, Copenhagen, which used objects associated with babies, such as toys and monitors, to raise questions about time, leisure and work. “The jury particularly praised the warm, humorous and transcendental qualities that lie behind the elegant aesthetic and conceptual nature of Leung’s work,” the Tate Britain press release said.
Multidisciplinary artist Rory Pilgrim was nominated for RAFTS at the Serpentine and Barking Town Hall, as well as a live performance of the play at Cadogan Hall. Pilgrim was praised by the jury for creating “beautiful and moving musical arrangements” that “brought light to the voices of his collaborators.”
Barbara Walker was nominated for Burden of Proof at the international exhibition platform Sharjah Biennial 15. Walker’s presentation looked at the impact of the Windrush scandal, delving into racial identity, exclusion and power. The jury praised her “ability to use portraits of monumental scale to tell stories of equally monumental nature, while maintaining a deep tenderness and intimacy throughout the scope of her work.”
Where can you see the work?
The works of the four shortlisted artists are now on display at Towner Eastbourne.
Turner Prize 2023, Towner Eastbourne, until 14 April 2024; townereastbourne.org.uk
