London’s Somerset House exhibit explores impact of Stanley Kubrick

PanARMENIAN.Net - This summer, London’s Somerset House will stage a unique exhibition which explores the impact of one of the most innovative and influential film makers of all time – Stanley Kubrick – through some of today’s most talented artists, Art Daily reports.

Contributors include: Doug Aitken, Gavin Turk, Haroon Mirza & Anish Kapoor, Iain Forsyth & Jane Pollard with Jarvis Cocker, Beth Orton and others, Jane & Louise Wilson, Jocelyn Pook, Marc Quinn, Mat Collishaw, Michael Nyman, Mick Jones, Nathan Coley, Peter Kennard, Polly Morgan, Samantha Morton, Sarah Lucas, Thomas Bangalter and more.

The group will each provide a new or existing work inspired by Stanley Kubrick, responding to a film, scene, character or theme from the Kubrick archives, or even the man himself. Together they will bring new perspectives on the cinematic master’s life and work.

The exhibition is additionally supported by artist Christiane Kubrick, the director’s wife of 41 years, who will be lending a portrait entitled ‘Remembering Stanley’ especially for the show, and Jan Harlan, Kubrick’s Executive Producer for 28 years. It is also endorsed by Warner Bros. Pictures, who collaborated with Kubrick on all his films since 1971.

Kubrick began making films at the age of 25, with his first big feature The Killing in 1956. Over the following four decades, he directed cinema classics including Dr Strangelove, 2001: A Space Odyssey, A Clockwork Orange, Barry Lyndon, The Shining, Full Metal Jacket and Eyes Wide Shut. He did not allow himself to be controlled by the Hollywood studios, therefore delivering films of pertinence and power, sometimes of controversy and always of originality across genres, inspiring future generations of film makers and artists alike.

Visitors will proceed through the exhibition along a corridor patterned with a block hexagonal design by Adam Broomberg & Oliver Chanarin, similar to The Overlook Hotel’s carpeted floors from The Shining, to set the spirit of the show. A variety of contributors have also drawn inspiration from Kubrick’s adaptation of Stephen King’s thriller.

Gavin Turk’s ‘The Shining’ is a model of a maze of mirrors, reminiscent of the hotel hedges, suggesting the illusion of losing one’s self, just as Kubrick achieved for viewers of his cinematic masterpieces. Artist-film makers Iain Forsyth & Jane Pollard’s ‘Requiem for 114 Radios’ features a choir of 14 singer-songwriters, such as Jarvis Cocker, Beth Orton and Elena Tonra of Daughter, performing a version of Dies Irae, the chilling composition used in the opening credits to The Shining. The recordings will be broadcast over 114 vintage radios, which are in themselves another Kubrick reference; a piece of radio kit in Dr Strangelove was named ‘CRM 114 Discriminator’.

Contemporary Scottish artist Nathan Coley will showcase ‘The Grady Twins’. Last year, his series of cardboard scale models of every ‘Place of Worship’ listed in the Edinburgh Yellow Pages from 2004 was mostly destroyed through water damage. Some of the salvaged towers and spires formed the starting point of this new work; a ‘twin’ of the 2004 models were created for the exhibition this year. The second sculpture is almost exactly the same as the original, but some elements are ever so slightly different, just like the infamous twins from the film.

London installation artist Paul Fryer has also chosen The Shining, with a waxwork of Kubrick dressed as Jack Nicholson’s lead character Jack Torrance suspended in a freezer, in reference to the film’s final scene.

Kubrick’s sci-fi classic 2001: A Space Odyssey is another popular reference point for contributors. In a dimly lit room, a loudspeaker is positioned from the ceiling in front of a large concave mirror for Haroon Mirza & Anish Kapoor’s ‘Bitbang Mirror’. The sound it reflects and the darkened space emulate the disorienting experience of the opening sequence of the sci-fi film, which features a black screen with distant rumblings for a matter of minutes. Meanwhile, Mat Collishaw has made a spaceman’s helmet featuring otherworldly sights and sounds and actress Samantha Morton has written a short film, sparked by her first experience of watching a Kubrick film, shot by music video and film director Douglas Hart. Fragrance designer Azzi Glasser has also created a scent inspired by the film, which evokes a sense of cold, darkness and loneliness and references elements of technological materials and machines.

Dr Strangelove is a source of inspiration for Doug Aitken, Michael Nyman and Peter Kennard amongst others. Doug Aitken will provide ‘Twilight’, a public pay phone bathed in a luminous glow, evocative of the Dr Strangelove scene where Mandrake attempts to make a collect call to the President of the United States. Britain’s foremost political artist Peter Kennard juxtaposes images of characters set in the War Room of Dr Strangelove with present day leaders of nuclear states, in a statement about the renewal of Trident, while composer Michael Nyman will create a soundtrack to re-cut scenes from the satire, which echoes the feeling of terror he experienced after first seeing the film in the late 1960s.

Other artists have alluded to A Clockwork Orange. Art taxidermist Polly Morgan has produced a snake in tribute to Alex DeLarge’s pet. Sarah Lucas will lend ‘Priapus’, a phallic sculpture suggestive of the iconic murder weapon in A Clockwork Orange. The work will be set to new music by Mick Jones (The Clash) and exhibition co-curator James Lavelle.

While these artists have responded to some of Kubrick’s most famous movies, directors Jane & Louise Wilson have looked at a film that Kubrick had extensively researched, but never took into production. ‘Unfolding the Aryan Papers’ features test shots taken in 1993 of the chosen lead actress Johanna ter Steege, who would have played Tania, a Polish Jew trying to save herself and her family from the Nazis. Images of specific scenes that Kubrick wished to recreate are also intercut into film. It details the lengths that Kubrick would take to research his projects; however, the venture was shelved after the announcement that Steven Spielberg’s Schindler’s List was going into production, which explored similar themes.

The exhibition is curated by James Putnam and James Lavelle, who is a lifelong fan of Kubrick and has been inspired by the master film maker in his own career as an artist and DJ.