While we don our best druid drag in preparation for this year’s celebration of Samhain, Somerset House are opening their doors to a brand new exhibition entitled The Horror Show! – A Twisted Tale of Modern Britain. Opening today, Thursday 27th October, and running through until February, the show examines how ideas rooted in horror have informed the last 50 years of creative rebellion in Britain.
Featuring over 200 artworks and culturally significant artefacts from some of our country’s most provocative artists, the exhibition presents an alternative perspective on the last five decades of modern British history in three acts – Monster, Ghost and Witch. The exhibition offers a heady ride through the disruption of 1970s punk to the revolutionary potential of modern witchcraft, showing how the anarchic alchemy of horror – its subversion, transgression and the supernatural – can help make sense of the world around us.
To celebrate this most wicked of exhibitons, Loverboy spoke with Queer creative Jenkin Van Zyl, one of the artists partaking in this celebration of the sinister sub-cultures of Britain.
First things first, Jenkin, tell us about yourself…
Sure, I’m mainly a filmmaker. My last three films became an exploration of genres like Western, Horror or Sci-Fi as a way to re-enact these macho cinematic forms of violence. They were filmed on abandoned Hollywood film sets. So it was a process of breaking into…or sneaking into decaying, slightly hideous and mulchy places like Spaghetti Western film sets in the south of Spain.
My last film, Machines of Love, which is linked to my piece in The Horror Show!, was shot just in Iceland on this dormant unused Viking film set. It features this sextet of ghoulish characters marooned on a frozen beach, stuck in a casino built out of the husks of aeroplanes, playing this dicey game of chance where they breed cakes. The climax of the film shows these birthing scenes where they deliver these sickly, quite grotesque cakes baked in their own likeness. The cakes in the film are rebaked and placed this fridges in this ambivalent sanctuary. The statues that are in The Horror Show! are the sculptural escapees from that film reimagined.
© Jenkin van Zyl
I think, I’m speechless. Ahaha…that sounds incredible. And how did you become involved in Somerset House’s The Horror Show!?
Clare, the senior curator, got in touch with me. It’s nice the other artists are either people I have studied with or have known for a bunch of years. In the same room as me are Harminder Judge and Matilda Moors. Harminder does a lot of performance but now does a lot of formal paintings. Matilda does all sorts. We all studied together at The Royal Academy. There’s an interesting confluence of people that have traced my time in London throughout the show.
Do you think current ideas and themes were always present in horror films, dating back to Dracula & Frankenstein or is this a more recent idea with films like Get Out?
I guess with all art mediums, they exist in reaction. Horror delights in its own ridiculousness, like slasher films for example. There will always be a wave that comes against that and makes it more politicised or intellectual. Then there comes another reaction going in a different direction. Stuff like Axe that came out this year, a really old-school stupid slasher film, that comes in reaction to Ari Aster (Midsommar) or those new intellectual horror films. Because of the way Horror can obliterate, I think it’s always been an interesting way to look at the body as a site of politics. I suppose the reason I am interested in it is because it presents the body as being able to be reformulated, smashed and remade. Also I like the way Horror can be used in a way to delight in things that might hurt you. It allows you to find pleasure in things that are the most terrifying and that’s a really healthy, fun thing about the genre.
Creating horror films from real events in the UK – well, that could sound difficult to find some positive energy from that. But is there some light at the end of the long, dark, rat-infested tunnel?
The exhibition is trying to show that acts of resistance, whether through subculture or subversion, are always really important antidotes…we need to hold on to the spirit of the radical British counterculture. But right now we seem to be living in a reality that is glitching. It’s difficult to feel optimistic about the future at the minute and naive to do so. It’s quite easy to summon up these ‘end of the world’ narratives through Horror. But I’m interested in the way we can use these genres to make Acts of prefiguration or to imagine different worlds, even if they’re not better. I think that’s an important thing that sci-fi and horror can do.
Is there anything you want to achieve with this exhibition?
There’s obviously a real interest in the aesthetics of horror at the minute. It think it’s really important. What’s exciting about this show is that they’re really grounding horror within societal conflicts or conversations that have gone on during the different decades they are looking at. They are rooting it all in politics which I think is a really important thing to rehone in on and push forward. Tracing the journey of all of London’s different subcultures is really exciting.
And what do you want to come from it for you?
Some champagne at the end of the evening! But also it’s always interesting to see your work reframed around artists you may have looked up to. That’s what’s always exciting about a group show.
© Jenkin van Zyl
What kind of horror do you enjoy? I was seventeen when Scream came out – like it was a real moment for me.
Yeah it’s a fun meta horror that you can feel there’s a renewed interest in it. Have you seen the new one?
I have…and I didn’t hate it!
Me neither. It was fun. I like the crossover between really hardcore horror and stuff like Almodovar. I like things that dance on this knife edge of paradise and hellscapes, combining horror with camp or things that are more deliciously outrageous.
Did you see Gaspar Noe’s Climax?
I adore that film. It’s so good. Titane is my favourite recent horror for sure. I liked that it was just a freefall. In some ways you could look at it as a love film but I like that it didn’t force you to make sense of it too much. You just have to sign on and buckle in for the ride of it. I liked how meandering and fantastical all the plot ran. Really beautiful.
Lastly we are named after the biggest selling single of 2001 and so we always ask what is your favourite Mariah track?
It’s got to be ‘Fantasy’. During the Queen’s funeral, I found myself, by accident in this drag bar called Funny Girls in Blackpool. It is a big Art Deco cinema which has been turned into this ‘end of the pier’ drag venue. For the Queen’s two-minute silence, they had orchestrated this big thing of having the Queen’s face at the back of the stage. But at the last minute they couldn’t switch the music off so they just had Mariah’s ‘Fantasy’ blasting out during the silence. There were lots of straight people on their hen dos and stuff. Everyone was just being politely awkward. It was so funny.
The Horror Show! is on now at Somerset House until February 2023.
For more information see www.somersethouse.org.uk
