Ah, Kubrick: the perfectionist, the pioneer, the cinematic master. There are few filmmakers who generate such reverence and obsession as the mind behind ‘2001 Space Odyssey’, ‘The Shining’, ‘Clockwork Orange’ and ‘Dr Strangelove’.
One such fan is James Lavelle, aka electronic musician UNKLE, who in the late ’90s made contact with the director in the hope of getting him to create a music video. Sadly, Kubrick died before anything came to fruition. Fast forward a few years, however, and Lavelle has channelled his passion for the filmmaker into curating this group show currently occupying Somerset House’s West Wing. He has gathered work by over 50 artists who’ve each been inspired by the auteur, including Sarah Lucas, Gavin Turk and Peter Kennard.
Exploring one artist’s work through the medium of others is a tough proposition – the works here are diverse, each with a different relationship to the filmmaker and walking through them doesn’t always feel very coherent. But there are numerous intriguing and exciting individual pieces in the mix. An early highlight is Iain Forsyth and Jane Pollard’s ‘Requiem For 114 Radios’ (2006), a room made up as a dusty office, filled floor-to-ceiling with radios of every type which crackle, buzz and flicker. They come together in an overwhelming cacophony to broadcast Verdi’s ‘Dies Irae’, which Kubrick used to chilling effect in both ‘The Shining’ and ‘Clockwork Orange’.
Sound is also used in an unsettling way in Haroon Mirza and Anish Kapoor’s ‘Bit Bang Mirror, 2013-2015’: a buzzing, flashing room featuring a concave mirror by Kapoor which draws on Kubrick’s masterful manipulation of light and sound to create an almost unbearable tension.
And last in the exhibition is Joseph Kosuth’s ‘A Grammatical Remark’ #9, London’ (2016). The words of Jack and Wendy’s sinister exchange on the stairs of the Outlook Hotel in ‘The Shining’ are written around the building’s historic Nelson staircase. With each step you feel the slow, rising panic of that expertly choreographed scene. It’s a subtle, effective ending to a show that will have you running to download Kubrick’s incredible back catalogue. And rightly so.