Daydreaming with Stanley Kubrick at Somerset House: An exhibition celebrates the legendary director

This summer, 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 creatives, from the established to the emerging.

Contributors include Sarah Lucas, Gavin Turk, Joseph Kosuth, Doug Aitken, Michael Nyman, Mat Collishaw, Peter Kennard, Charlotte Colbert, Polly Morgan, Rachel Howard, Nancy Fouts, Nathan Coley, Philip Castle, Doug Foster and more, all of whom will provide a new or existing work which has been inspired by Stanley Kubrick. Participating artists have been invited to respond to a film, scene, character or theme from the Kubrick archives, shining new perspectives onto the cinematic master’s lifework.

Pioneering conceptual artist Joseph Kosuth will create an installation of text based on the language of Kubrick’s work, while Britain’s foremost political artist Peter Kennard will juxtapose 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. Inspired by the Stargate sequence in 2001: A Space Odyssey, film maker Doug Foster will invite visitors to experience an endless, widescreen tunnel and referencing the same film, Mat Collishaw will make a spaceman’s helmet featuring otherworldly sights and sounds.

Doug Aitken will provide Twilight, a public pay phone bathed in a luminous glow, which will be evocative of the Dr Strangelove scene where Mandrake attempts to make a collect call to the President of the United States. Sarah Lucas will lend Priapus, a phallic sculpture suggestive of the iconic murder weapon in A Clockwork Orange. Gavin Turk’s The Shining is a model of a maze of mirrors, reminiscent of the hotel hedges from Kubrick’s horror film. The work suggests the illusion of losing one’s self, as Kubrick achieved with his cinematic masterpieces.

Some of the works will also be set within compositions by James Lavelle and musical collaborators, paying homage to the memorable scores and sounds of Kubrick’s films.

The exhibition is supported by artist Christiane Kubrick, the director’s wife of 41 years, who will be painting a new piece especially for the show, and Jan Harlan, Kubrick’s executive producer for 28 years. It is additionally 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.