Toby Messenger is a Glasgow-based visual artist whose practice merges drawing, painting, assemblage, and installation.

Working primarily with cardboard, recycled wood, and household materials, he constructs scaled replicas of everyday objects—cars, bikes, bedroom DJ rigs—that channel a spirit of DIY ingenuity and cultural critique.

Rooted in the aesthetics of rave culture and a nostalgic fascination with the motor car, Messenger’s lo-fi constructions celebrate the studio as a space of making, memory, and quiet resistance. His work draws on the raw energy of Neo-Dada and the readymade, transforming overlooked materials into playful, poignant monuments to a pre-digital world.

Drawing remains central to his practice: closely observed studies of urban spaces, objects, and environments echo the tactile immediacy of his sculptural work. Across media, Messenger explores the creative potential of what’s at hand—improvisational yet intentional, rough-edged yet deeply considered.

Messenger studied Fine Art (Painting) at The Glasgow School of Art and has exhibited widely across the UK and internationally. His solo and collaborative projects include Turning Up in a Tiger Suit at a Techno Party (The Old Hairdressers, Glasgow), The Effects of Good and Bad Government, Crash n’ Burn, and The Psychopathology of Everyday Life at Glasgow Project Room, as well as Freedom No.5 at Glasgow Art Club (RGI Fellowship Award) and Flat/Space at Babelkunst in Trondheim, Norway. In 2008–09, he was a finalist in The Aspect Painting Prize, exhibiting at Gallery 28 Cork Street, London.

In 2024, he was invited to participate in I Hear a New World at Villa Stuck in Munich, curated by Markus and Micha Acher (The Notwist/Alien Disko Records) and Anne Marr, alongside international artists including Ruohann Wang, A Happy Return, Adam Higton, Asuna, Katsura Mouri, and Bear Kenchington.

He was artist-in-residence at Shapeero-Murray in early 2025, where he produced a site-specific, performative 1:1 scale sculpture of a Formula 1 car.

Messenger has curated three major group exhibitions under the moniker From the Big Splash to the Last Splash at Terrace (London) and IOTA (Glasgow) in 2023, and SPACE JUNK at Strange Field (Glasgow) in 2024—each showcasing cross-generational artists in expansive, DIY-spirited formats.

He was also co-founder of 48 King Street Studios in Glasgow, established in 2001 to support emerging artists from Glasgow School of Art.

Residencies include a three-month Royal Scottish Society of Painters in Watercolour (RSW) residency at Hospitalfield House in 2006 (with a return alumni residency in 2008), and a residency at Lademoen Kunstnerverksteder in Trondheim in 2007.

Forthcoming exhibitions include Drive at PAPPLE, East Lothian (2025), and the solo installation K’POW!at IOTA, Glasgow (2025).

His work has been featured in The Skinny, The Glasgow Herald, Glasgow Art Map, and The List.