The Horror Show, Somerset House review ★★★★★

What does an artwork featuring conjoined triplets by Jake and Dinos Chapman, a Spitting Image puppet of Margaret Thatcher and a screenplay of A Clockwork Orange have in common? They are all part of Somerset House’s Horror Show exhibition, a broad-ranging exhibition that takes the horror genre as its starting point before exploring how it has influenced creative rebellion over the last 50 years.

With such a broad theme to play with it means there’s a wide variety of artworks and artefacts on display. Some it is downright disturbing including the scarily realistic self-portrait as a drowned man by Jeremy Millar whose title describes exactly what you see - if this hyper-real mannequin was outside on the Embankment, passers-by would call for an ambulance and try to resuscitate him. Equally disturbing, are the monstrous heads in vitrines by Jenkin van Zyl that feel like the nightmarish cousins of those talking heads from Futurama.

It’s not all darkness as a section on fashion includes surreal outfits by the likes of Leigh Bowery and Tai Shani, and there’s a playfully adult artwork by Tim Noble and Sue Webster where a mound of red penis sculptures is spotlit to create a silhouette of the artists’ faces on the wall behind it.

This blend of fear and play is neatly summed up by a very creepy fibreglass boy behind a frosted door by Kerry Stewart, next to David Shrigley’s witty taxidermy kitten holding up a sign declaring ‘I’m dead’.

While there are great works aplenty in this show the theme holding them together is very loose, as it brings together body horror, comedy horror and political horror, with a dose of punk thrown in. Just as terrifying as the artworks is the curation, which doesn’t do a great job of explaining how all these items relate to each other.

It’s a shame as it’s the only letdown in a show and with some tighter curation this could have been a must-see show. That being said, it still contains dozens of great works that are worth seeing, and as long as you can forgive the lack of a coherent narrative you’ll find this show to be a scream.