The Berlin-based artist was nominated for shows at London’s Camden Art Centre and Modern Art Oxford
The British artist Jesse Darling has won the 2023 Turner Prize. He was announced as the winner of the £25,000 award, considered the most significant in the UK art world, at a ceremony held at Eastbourne’s Winter Garden, which is adjacent to Towner Eastbourne art gallery on the UK’s south coast.
The Towner is currently hosting an exhibition of work by all four Turner Prize contenders. Darling’s section sees him using motifs of the British state to conjure a dystopian end of the world environment, in which governmental attempts at control have crumbled and led to a state of chaos. It’s a nightmarish scene fashioned out of the sort of quotidian materials one finds on a walk down any city street. Crowd control barriers, broken and battered, open the show. There is barbed wire, welded concrete barriers, official-looking files that cannot be accessed, spikes designed to stop birds roosting, or, perhaps, to stop homeless people from a moment of rest.