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One of the world’s best-known prizes for the visual arts, the Turner Prize aims to promote public debate around new developments in contemporary art. The winner will be announced on 5 December 2023 at an award ceremony in Eastbourne’s Winter Garden. The four nominated artists work is now on display across all three floors at Towner Eastbourne.

Jesse Darling works in sculpture, installation, video, drawing, sound, text and performance, using a ‘materialist poetics’ to explore and reimagine the everyday technologies that represent how we live. Darling has often combined industrial materials such as sheet metal and welded steel with everyday objects to explore ideas of the domestic and the institutional, home and state, stability and instability, function and dysfunction, growth and collapse.

Darling was nominated for his solo exhibitions No Medals, No Ribbons at Modern Art Oxford and Enclosures at Camden Art Centre. Taking cues from Towner’s coastal location, Darling brings together new and recent works in an installation that explores borders, bodies, nationhood and exclusion. The sculptural works Corpus (Half-staff) and Inter Alia I (both 2022) form a fragmented colonnade in the gallery. Here, concrete and polystyrene pillars are topped with barbed wire, venetian blinds and net curtains. Pedestrian barriers and prickly anti-bird spikes also echo a hostile and controlling element of the built environment, with a jarring proximity to our domestic everyday.

Ghislaine Leung’s practice takes a critical look at the conditions of art production, its presentation and circulation. Leung has developed a process of art making that results in ‘score-based artworks’. The ‘scores’ are text-based instructions or descriptions that are realised by the gallery team in close conversation with the artist.

Leung was nominated for her solo exhibition Fountains at Simian, Copenhagen which consisted of five score-based works including Fountains (2022), an artwork created from a score that simply states ‘a fountain installed in the exhibition space to cancel sound’. At Towner, the exhibition also features a baby monitor installed in the art store, broadcasting live to the exhibition space, and a wall drawing representing the hours that Leung can dedicate to working in her studio. These examples speak to the realities of working in multiple roles as an artist and mother, and highlight Leung’s interest in the time, labour and support structures required to make and maintain artworks.

Rory Pilgrim is a multidisciplinary artist working across song writing, composition, films, texts, drawings, paintings and live performances. Pilgrim aims to challenge the nature of how we come together, speak, listen and strive for social change through sharing and voicing personal experience.

Pilgrim was nominated for the commission RAFTS at Serpentine and Barking Town Hall, and a live performance of the work at Cadogan Hall, London. The RAFTS (2022) film presented at Towner is a seven-song oratorio narrated by eight residents of Barking and Dagenham from Green Shoes Arts, reflecting on what the symbol of a raft means to them through song, music and poetry. They are joined by singers Declan Rowe John, Robyn Haddon, Kayden Fearon and members of Barking and Dagenham Youth Dance. RAFTS was made during the Covid-19 pandemic and in this work Pilgrim positions the raft as a symbol of support keeping us afloat in challenging and precarious circumstances. Timed screenings of RAFTS and RAFTS:Live are presented alongside paintings, drawings and sculptures that expand this theme.

Barbara Walker works in a range of media and formats, from embossed works on paper to paintings on canvas and large scale charcoal wall drawings. Growing up in Birmingham, Walker’s experiences have shaped a practice concerned with issues of class and power, gender, race, representation and belonging.

Walker was nominated for her presentation entitled Burden of Proof at Sharjah Biennial 15. In this body of work, Walker brings careful attention and visibility to individuals and families affected by the Windrush scandal. The exhibition at Towner features large scale charcoal figures drawn directly onto the gallery wall and a series of works on paper. Monochromatic portraits of people impacted by the scandal are layered over hand-drawn reproductions of documents that evidence their right to remain in the UK. Walker invites the viewer to consider the true consequences of political decision-making, the complexities of diasporic identity and the struggle for legitimacy.
 

Alex Farquharson, Director of Tate Britain and Chair of the Turner Prize 2023 jury, said:  

"I would like to warmly congratulate each of the four shortlisted artists on their outstanding presentations as part of the Turner Prize 2023 exhibition at Towner this year. Jesse Darling, Ghislaine Leung, Rory Pilgrim and Barbara Walker have remarkably varied approaches to creating art that actively responds to and reflects the world around us - engaging with the social, economic, cultural and political issues of our time. The Turner Prize offers a fascinating snapshot of contemporary British art now, and a key part of its popularity is its ability to spotlight the rich cultural offerings of our towns and cities on its travels to a new host venue every other year. Towner’s dynamic centenary programme makes this a truly unmissable moment in Turner Prize history, and I look forward to this year’s exhibition being enjoyed by East Sussex’s residents and visitors alike.”
 

Joe Hill, Director and CEO, Towner Eastbourne, said:

“We are delighted to welcome the Turner Prize 2023 to Eastbourne, as the centrepiece of Towner Eastbourne’s Centenary year. Founded as ‘an art gallery for the people’, the gallery has always championed living artists and has been at the forefront of showcasing and collecting contemporary art in the UK. What better way to celebrate this legacy than to bring one of the world’s best-known prizes for the visual arts to the region. 

The Turner Prize exhibition offers a unique opportunity for our town to promote engagement with contemporary art, and alongside our associated programme Eastbourne ALIVE, it will give us the opportunity to inspire artists and creatives of the future through the most ambitious public art and youth engagement programme the gallery has ever undertaken. Together, this will create a catalyst moment to embed the creative arts at the heart of our town’s vision for a generation. Thank you to our sponsors King & McGaw and all our funders and partners, and of course the artists."

Find out more about the Turner Prize at Towner on our Turner Prize page, including associated events, access information, tips on how to get here and an option to book your preferred timeslot.