JACKSON'S
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Birth of the Boys (2019) 5 minutes, 25 seconds, Install at Sydney College of the Arts
JACKSON'S WEBSITE :]
JACKSON'S WEBSITE :]
... A DEEP PSYCHIC EXFOLIATION
Install photo from Paris Photo at the Grand Palais (2025)
HAVE A GOOD DEATH begins in the middle of things.
It’s not really about endings - it’s about shedding. The psychic exfoliation. The little, often brushed-over “deaths” we live through - the quiet collapses, the moments we let go of old versions of ourselves. Here, death isn’t final. It’s a portal. A nosedive into the unknown, where the only way out is through.
Across monumental jacquard tapestries, digital wanderings, and quietly watchful forms, this exhibition invites us to step inside the cycle - decay, confusion, revelation, rebirth - and maybe even lol a little as you go. It’s about breaking free from personal histories, accepted narratives, and archaic hierarchies to move towards a new you - you got this !!!
Install photo from Paris Photo at the Grand Palais (2025)
The journey begins with CREATOR 2 COMPOST, a towering tapestry that holds the show’s beating heart.
This is where we sit in our humanity - imperfect, eroding, resilient. The work traces a cosmic humility: the maker becomes matter, the divine returns to dirt, the sublime to swamp. It’s a call for softness, to allow collapse without shame. Life’s messy. DJ Khaled got lost on a jetski that one time. The Titanic sank. The Evergreen cooked world trade. Boaty McBoatface happened too. This is the beauty and absurdity of being alive – fragile, full of feeling, still here.
Then comes JEROME AFTER EARTH - a vision not of divine clarity, but of its collapse.
The saint is marooned in a psychic wasteland, surrounded by the ruins of culture that refuse to stay buried. Everything’s gone: Bambi’s mum, the Dulux dog, Captain Cook. The whole cast of civilisation is long dead and still refusing to log off. Escape plans to Mars drift above like salvation myths, while ghosts of ideologies past claw their way back into view. Jerome isn’t seeking purity anymore - he’s just bearing witness. The rot is speaking. And it knows our name.
CREATOR 2 COMPOST (2025) woven jacquard tapestry. 502 x 121cm
JEROME AFTER EARTH (2025) woven jacquard tapestry. 137 x 209 cm
At the centre sits HAVE A GOOD DEATH, a woven hero’s-journey handbook rendered in chaos and care. The protagonist (you’ll spot them - riding the horse with a staff in front of the towers) has just made it past LEVEL 1: colonial space junk, utility-pole deities, and the Not All Men Museum - great success. They’ve dodged the Pirate Elon motorcade and the swamp-loving, wall-building Shrek Trump. Now it’s time to flip the script. Cue Harambe with a lightsaber. Eve and her girl gang getting their revenge. And the American Dream? Just that - a dream.
Push through and you’ll reach The Great Dividing Wall. Only toy soldiers guard it - easy. Beyond that: freedom, maybe. Or at least a happy little skeleton in front of a cheese moon who’s conquered it all (that’s you!).
HAVE A GOOD DEATH (2025) woven jacquard tapestry. 137 x 806cm
Somewhere between collapse and clarity, the video work HOW TO HAVE A BAD DEATH loops endlessly. Saint Jerome and Bigfoot wander through a pixelated wilderness, trying (and failing) to escape. Jerome once secluded himself in the desert to find meaning; Bigfoot’s been hiding forever. Both are trapped by their context, circling the ruins of culture like two lost saints in a game that never ends. DJ Khaled even rides through on a jet ski, yelling divine rights from another dimension.
It’s funny and sad and familiar - a reminder of what happens when you try to out-run transformation instead of moving through it. Bigfoot seems weirdly okay with being lost though. Maybe that’s the point: some forms of wandering are their own kind of peace.
HOW TO HAVE A BAD DEATH (2025) video and sound, 4 minutes and 11 seconds
HAVE A GOOD DEATH isn’t about mourning, or even celebrating endings - it’s about embracing them. Seeing who we’ve been, what we’ve clung to, and what we’re ready to let go of. It’s a letting-go of systems that hold us back, so we can rebuild ourselves stronger, stranger, more gorgeous.
A prayer for transformation disguised as a joke.
A reckoning dressed as a doof.
A goodbye that feels like a hi hello.
This body of work was shown at Paris Photo 2025 with THIS IS NO FANTASY. It was named one of the Top 10 Booths at the fair by Beaux Arts magazine.
Install photo from Paris Photo at the Grand Palais (2025)
