Reflections on ... The Horror Show! Exhibit at Somerset House

 

/ The entrance to the exhibit at Somerset House suggested a gaping demonic mouth. Come on in! All photos by me unless stated otherwise! / 

As every UK resident knows, contemporary Britain is a total hellscape. The recently closed exhibit The Horror Show! A Twisted Tale of Modern Britain (27 October 2022 – 19 February 2023, co-curated by the duo of Iain Forsyth and Jane Pollard and Claire Catterall) embraced that concept and ran with it! 

From the Somerset House website: 

“The Horror Show! is a landmark exhibition that invites visitors to journey to the underbelly of Britain’s cultural psyche and look beyond horror as a genre, instead taking it as a reaction to our most troubling times. 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. Recast as a story of cultural shapeshifting, each section interprets a specific era through the lens of a classic horror archetype with thematically linked contemporaneous and new works.  

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. Horror not only allows us to express our deepest fears; it gives a powerful voice to the marginalised and society’s outliers, providing us with tools to overcome our anxieties and imagine a radically different future.” 

/ Pal and I at The Horror Show! /

Anyway, the exhibit was a dense, swirling nightmarish swoon that cast a spell on me. As The Guardian’s art critic Jonathon Jones concluded, The Horror Show! was a “witch’s cauldron of an exhibition”, continuing, “There is another Britain, this exhibition convinces you, that exists only as a web of imagination, a phantom realm that defies the reality of the everyday like a ghost channel taking over your TV.” 

The Horror Show! was split into three themes: Monster, Ghost and Witch. Each section had its own unsettling “theme tune” / soundscape, designed to induce maximum dread: “Bela Lugosi’s Dead” by Bauahaus (Monster), “On the Wrong Side of Relaxation” by Barry Adamson featuring the panicked whispers and wails of Diamanda Galas (Ghost) and finally, Mica Levi’s “Lipstick to the Void” from the Under the Skin (2013) soundtrack (Witch).

 My personal highlights: 

The Horror Show! pretty much incorporated all my favourite people and cultural movements (Siouxsie, Jordan, Leigh Bowery, Public Image Limited, Princess Julia, horror movies, punk music) so it was virtually impossible for me not to be enthralled. 

Any time I see old Vivienne Westwood /Malcolm McLaren punk apparel from their SEX boutique in an exhibit, it's like witnessing sacred religious artifacts! 

Sue Webster's customized Siouxsie black leather biker jacket (above. Via). 

“Return of the Repressed3” by Jake and Dinos Chapman 

I could have watched the seemingly endless loop of clubbers arriving at club night Kinky Gerlinky from beginning to end. My boyfriend Pal used to be a Kinky Gerlinky regular, and I was hoping he might appear! He didn’t but I did ask him to describe the wildest outfit he ever wore to Kinky Gerlinky. Totally blasé, Pal recalled, "Oh, one time I dressed as a zebra. Another time, a friend's sister was pregnant, so I made a mould of her tits and pregnant belly and then covered it in flesh-coloured rubber and turned it into a bodysuit and added a wig to the crotch, so it looked like wild pubic hair ..." (That sounds almost like Silence of the Lambs!). 

The footage of members of the public responding to drag terrorist / performance artist Leigh Bowery displaying himself as an exhibit at the Anthony D'Offay Gallery in in 1988 (including some famous people like bad boy of dance Michael Clarke and Brix Smith of The Fall). 

Loved seeing the giant portrait of a pouty young Princess Julia (middle) by Derek Ridgers projected on the wall. 

/ One of Leigh Bowery's costumes /

/ Exterminating Angel by Pam Hogg  /

The whole video installation room devoted to the infamous BBC 1992 broadcast of Ghostwatch, complimented with disturbing music clips from 1990s acts like Prodigy, Portishead, Tricky and Aphex Twin. (The day Pal and I visited, there was a surprising amount of children present in what was most definitely a not “child friendly” exhibit. I truly hope the Ghostwatch room gave them nightmares!). 

Kerry Stewart’s “The Boy from the Chemist is Here to See You” (1993) (Above). 

The Witch room made me reflect on what a totemic film The Wicker Man (1973) is in British culture. In the early seventies it flopped big time and was little seen, and yet The Wicker Man went on to have so much influence, open a whole can of worms and invent "rustic horror" as a genre. Also represented: Nicholas Roeg’s Don’t Look Now (1973) and The Witches (1990). The spiked “self-flagellation” / punishment shoes from Saint Maud (2019). (If you haven’t seen Saint Maud, it’s the most significant British psychological horror film of recent times). The bridle scold from She Will (2021). The oeuvre of maverick British director Ben Wheatley. 

Cathy Ward’s corn husk dolls entitled "Home Rites" (2009) (pictured above) were very Blair Witch Project. 

/ Puppet from the 2018 British horror film Possum / 

And I loved that the finale was a darkened red-lit “decompression room” but rather than offer any consolation, it was a disturbing experience eerily soundtracked by “We Wax. We Shall Not Wane” by Gazelle Twin, featuring actress Maxine Peake channeling the tortured psyches of women accused of witchcraft!   

/ Above: Pal and I at The Horror Show! /

Honourable mentions: Juno Calypso. Helen Chadwick. Gavin Turk’s self-portrait as Sid Vicious. Jamie Reid. Rachel Whiteread. Derek Jarman.  

This is a pretty superficial trawl through a fascinating exhibit! I wish I'd taken more photos. (I tried to go back again before The Horror Show! closed, but it didn't work out). 

Further reading:

The analysis by Jonathan Jones in The Guardian. 

My friend from New York, gal-about-town Emily Colucci swept through London earlier this year and visited the Horror Show! while she was in town. Read her in-depth and perceptive account in the essential Filthy Dreams blog.