A Wonderfully Surreal Homage To Kubrick At Somerset House.

Daydreaming with Stanley Kubrick, Somerset House ★★★★★

Tabish Khan
By Tabish Khan Last edited 92 months ago

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A Wonderfully Surreal Homage To Kubrick At Somerset House. Daydreaming with Stanley Kubrick, Somerset House 5
This creepy corridor greets visitors. The video of a chicken's eye by Koen Vanmechelen simply adds to the eerieness.

2001: A Space Odyssey, A Clockwork Orange, The Shining. Stanley Kubrick is a filmmaker who made some of the most iconic movies of all time.

As the curator so eloquently puts it:

I can't think of any filmmaker whose influence transcends so many creative spheres ... Kubrick was a true visionary who continues to provide a rich source of inspiration for artists

But how is this influence felt in the art world? If this exhibition is anything to go by, then it's massive.

Toby Dye's three screen video, shot along the same corridor, is quite disturbing.

It's beautifully set up with the main corridor looking like it's come straight out of the Overlook Hotel from The Shining. Orange flooring and lighting, terminating with a video of a chicken's eye staring back at us ups the creepiness factor, and this sense of the surreal never lets up throughout the show.

Over 40 works by artists including Anish Kapoor, street artist Invader, Gavin Turk and Sarah Lucas have created a perfectly eerie exhibition.

We face a screen where a neverending tunnel comes at the viewer — it was so impactful that we kept edging back on the bench as flame-like tendrils came towards us. A separate room containing a mirrored Anish Kapoor sculpture being bombarded by a speaker emitting a dissonant noise was equally trippy.

This infinite tunnel video by Doug Foster is quite terrifying and made us edge backwards.

Toby Dye has a fantastic three-screen video piece of the same corridor, each with different characters. One features an anarchist with gas mask, but the most unsettling is of a girl watering flowers. We've never seen a child look so innocent yet disturbed at the same time. Bounding around with energy and seemingly at ease with her clearly unfamiliar environment.

There are smaller works on display but it's the installations that truly blew us away. This is immersive art at its finest.

Daydreaming with Stanley Kubrick is at Somerset House until 24 August. Tickets are £12.50 / £9.50.

Fire is a major theme in Kubrick's work and you can definitely feel the heat from this homage by Stuart Haygarth.

Last Updated 06 July 2016