Jesse Darling

Just wanted to say it on my own feed yeah Big props to my bro and fellow artist and “very skilled metalworker” @sebastian_thomas_art

Yeah visual art is 🆒 but have you tried making 🎵music?????💓🛜📶💫💗🤯🌀🎆👂🏻🧠🫁🦶🏻🪽‼️❣️ Sooo apart from the fact that the jig is kinda 🆙 with the whole art world thing in the so-called West, being in real spaces with other bodies and making doing trying stuff together (alive, we’re alive!!) has been the 1️⃣ thing that has felt really 💯 to me since October ‘23 and I can’t believe my luck in collaborating w these mad good artists in @strangergentle . I played in bands all my life til one day I got sick and the docs said I’d never sing again. But they were wrong!! 👻🙃 🧿💐 This new moon equinox 🌘 feels like a good time to soft launch this project with a lil review in @thewiremagazine of our gig at @thehorsehospital ft Amra, Fondant & Semionightmarekatz. It was a hot mess and a good time. Pix on film by genius @imranperretta . Stay tuned for more. Love from your very own Prince of misrule, JD 😈🌜🎃

Tldr I cashed out the art prize and got a job teaching Fine Art as a runt subject in the medieval Masonic members club of Oxford University. These days I’ve got a library card that gets me into some of those walled gardens I spent my childhood looking into from without, and though this fool circle wasn’t on my bingo card I’ll take it and gladly, prodigal son vibes and all that, but this ain’t a fairy story so let’s see how it goes. Until then, here I am talking about why despite everything I’m glad to be in service as an art school pedagogue even and especially in “these urgent times.” Bummer that these clips cut out just before the punch lines but you’ll just have to watch the whole thing cos the juiciest bits are in any case not for the common feed (link in biome etc). Edit!! To any current or former students watching, this is just one person’s take, so defs just use what works and leave the rest. Views almost certainly don’t reflect those of my employer etc More soon by way of updates; not sure why, but it felt like time to say something “in public” again though this feels like a placeholder for a better form. Meanwhile I’ll be sitting under my apple tree, waiting for the fall 🍎

Sometimes I get mildly melancholy living in a small town in a flood valley but then I remember its cool cos the river spirit has her own wavy ideas and we made a sauna in a prefab shed we found at the end of the garden cos we could and when there’s nothing much else to do of an evening it ain’t the worst way to spend one’s time

LES AMBASSASEURS @palaisdetokyo 04/03/2026 - 09/13/2026 I was away from home for over a month. War weather rumbling across the world. Across Paris on a lime bike, the springtime dissonant as the gods hurled threats at each other from the hills on which they all tryna die. Uncomfortably situated in the disability-and-vulnerability carousel of this season’s curatorial flex, I can only think about one sickness rn; it’s the one we all live inside. In 1533 Holbein (whose vanitas lent us the title) saw death caught in the doorway between the ambassadors w their riches and machines. And in 2026 this is what there is, the balletic rise and fall of breathing bodies, swollen structures, whole civilisations all going the same way in the end, and it’s funny to think of an anti-monumental piece of anti-propaganda, 32 abstracted flags on their badly whitened lecterns like a bunch of flaccid superheroes, like statues with their faces covered, like the very newsfeed itself with their whole world plastered in blank ads and empty signs the way that capital empties out cities and makes of the world a grand amorphous shopping mall, and maybe that too is a form of religion but I’m not afraid to blaspheme cos there’s no hell but right here and no heaven either but this, you, us, and what we can find and make meanwhile. Now I’m done I can say that these two shows, made concurrently and in parallel, are tryna speak 2 sides of the same story: seen from above (the concrete and the adverts and the white noise of the machine) and felt from below (the trees and the dead and the rubble of cities). What more is there to say? Gratitude to the very skilled and talented printmaker @lew_mcc who abstracted and screenprinted all of N̶A̶T̶O̶ in just over a week; to @guillaumedesanges who finally persuaded me to cooperate, along with @llenakm and @soniarecasens ; the technical team at Palais especially Cedric, Wilfrid and the programmer — you made these undead bastards come alive. 3rd slide translation: ppl talk about “mass disabling events,” but the biggest mass disabling event is war

“Godsworth” A solo exhibition by Jesse Darling (@jessedarling ) is on view at Oude Kerk (@oudekerkamsterdam ), Amsterdam — until 27 September 2026. In Godsworth, Jesse Darling transforms the Oude Kerk into a landscape made of rubble, discarded furniture, decommissioned electronics, and materials collected across Amsterdam. At a time when social, political, and ecological systems are under strain, the exhibition reflects on what is deemed valuable, and how value is continually redefined and rediscovered. Drawing on the church’s former altars, Darling develops hybrid structures that sit between sites of devotion and construction site logic. These assemblages borrow equally from the language of ritual and building, forming open-ended configurations held together by scaffolding and conceived as inherently provisional. Godsworth thus unfolds as a shifting environment in which materials, meanings, and forms of relation remain in flux. Within this space, value never appears as fixed, but as an ongoing process, constantly negotiated and reworked under conditions of social, political, and ecological uncertainty. Images © Courtesy of Jesse Darling and Oude Kerk Amsterdam Photos by Aad Hoogendoorrn (@aadhoogendoorn ) ———  #Docent #DocentArt  #JesseDarling #OudeKerk #ArtInstallation

𝕲𝖔𝖉𝖘𝖜𝖔𝖗𝖙𝖍 24 April - 27 September @oudekerkamsterdam Old feeling made unfamiliar of something that exceeds both languages I use: can’t show, you have to see. Not authored but in becoming. Many hands making lights work and all our bodies in the fray with shovels and rakes. Cycles and returns in this site of circulation, old friends and new, lives I’ve lived among other lives held in this place. Roll up, pay up, blessings to heaven; geld not extricable from the insurance policy that is belief. Grass seeds sown in the rubble of once-built houses now razed: dust to dust starts to sprout. Young trees that grow through concrete in the city’s last free terrain reach heavenwards despite all, and a tree needs a scaffold the way that faith needs an architecture. And the light changes all the time, which is how I know it’s a conversation. With greatest of thanks to the kindness, commitment and gastvrijheid van @mariannavanderzwaag , @thamonihsan , @mariette_2day and the whole team at the church who understood the assignment and fought the law so that this could happen; to my friend, collaborator and sometime project consultant @joe_hi1 whose grace and cosmic thinking made every day better and saved the show; to Joep, Rob, Robert, Meinbert, Sjak, Edward, Stella, Lizzie, Mhairi, Kato, Thomas and Bas of @anythingispossible.nl - for the speelse goedhartige geest dat er heersde in de kerk deze weken, jullie waren heel gezellig om mee samen te werken. To all at @hetgroeneveld especially my old pal Daan and to Victor for that fucked up tarp that became Maria, and to everyone who lent tools and space and trust. To the congregation of the church, singing in the final slide: deze tentoonstelling is voornamelijk voor jullie bedoeld. To @buildgreene_ for their genius last minute advice and for ringing bells alongside fellow genius @yea.mhmmhm ; to @tomhardwickallan , who came to prayer with an armful of buckets and whose dream hymn, “Said a friend of the light,” is borrowed here to soundtrack the ascent of Mary. To @aa__walter for liaising w the dead and you know why else. And finally, to Whomsoever-It-May-Concern all up in and around us: yes ma’am, jaaá-men, ¡mer-𝘴𝘪!

Jesse Darling, 𝘎𝘰𝘥𝘴𝘸𝘰𝘳𝘵𝘩 opens Thursday, April 23, 2026 @oudekerkamsterdam . For his first institutional solo exhibition in the Netherlands, Jesse Darling transforms the church space of the Oude Kerk, covering large sections of the floor with rubble from construction waste. From this landscape, playful sculptures emerge, assembled by Darling from discarded furniture, scrap metal, and broken appliances. By using everyday waste and debris, Darling highlights the often messy reality of human existence and questions the social and political forces that determine what—and who—is considered valuable. Curated by Marianna van der Zwaag, the exhibition will be on view through September 27, 2026. Image: Jesse Darling: Godsworth, 2026, Oude Kerk Amsterdam. Photo by Aad Hoogendoorn.

##join us 2morrow for a conversation + q&a with artist jesse darling at the rietveld pavilion at 5pm## tue 21 april 17:00 @jessedarling is known for his disruptive, often humorous yet empathetic installations. In 2023 he was awarded the Turner Prize for this work. Using repurposed and everyday materials, he distorts familiar objects to create sculptures that hover between relics, carnivalesque figures and discarded remnants. His work reveals the fragility of systems that consider themselves invulnerable – from civilisation to identity – and makes palpable how notions of value and exclusion are constantly being redefined. moderated by @macamagana organized by @criticalstudies.sandberg

Opening next week: Jesse Darling (@jessedarling ) Godsworth Oude Kerk, Amsterdam, NL 24 April - 27 September 2026 Jesse Darling’s solo exhibition, Godsworth, opens next week at Oude Kerk, Amsterdam (@oudekerkamsterdam ). Darling transforms the church space of the Oude Kerk into a landscape of construction debris, old furniture, discarded electronics, and other materials collected from Amsterdam. At a time when social, political, and ecological systems are under strain, Godsworth reflects on what is valuable, and how value is continually redefined and rediscovered. Pictured: Installation view, Godsworth, Oude Kerk, Amsterdam, NL (2026). Photography: Maarten Nauw.

Today, Numéro art gives you a preview of two striking solo shows by @jessedarling and @benoitpieron at @palaisdetokyo in Paris. In the vast glass canopy, Jesse Darling unfolds a monumental installation composed of salvaged industrial materials, worn objects and urban debris, assembled into ghostly architectures. Illegible billboards and scattered podiums topped with drifting flags form a spectral landscape where symbols of authority appear eroded, muted, and on the verge of collapse. Through gestures both minimal and theatrical, Darling reveals the fragile, exhausted narratives embedded in everyday matter. Benoît Piéron presents Vernis à ombres, an oneiric environment shaped by the experience of illness, hospital spaces, and intersex identity. Blending sculpture, light, and DIY aesthetics, the exhibition transforms familiar settings into disorienting, luminous fictions. A shadow theatre animates an abstract film, where bodies, objects, and forms merge in a fluid choreography, while glittering lamp-like structures dissolve perception into kaleidoscopic reverie. 📸 1 : © Nanténé Traoré © Tobias Zielony 📸 2-8 : @lucas_b_r_n for @numeroart