December 5, 2023
Turner Prize 2023: Jesse Darling's Wobbling, Barricaded Britain
Jesse Darling won the 2023 Turner Prize with sculptural installations of hazard tape, crowd barriers and bowing office files — a wry, anxious portrait of a nation off balance.
Awarded at Towner Eastbourne, the 2023 Turner Prize went to Jesse Darling, an artist who turns the dull furniture of public life — crowd-control barriers, hazard tape, manila files, net curtains — into something precarious and strangely moving.
The jury praised work that captured a country feeling unsteady on its feet: institutions bending, certainties sagging, the everyday infrastructure of order quietly coming apart. It was political art that never lectured, only tilted the floor beneath you.
Named after J.M.W. Turner, the great painter of storms and steam, the prize once again proved its appetite for art that argues with its own time.
Image: “Joseph Mallord William Turner - Snow Storm - Steam-Boat off a Harbour's Mouth - WGA23178” — J. M. W. Turner, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.