Somerset House Studios announces AGM 2025

Featuring presentations by resident artists and invited guests: Gray Wielebinski, Manuka Honey, Paul Maheke, Nenni, Adrian Barstad Andresen, Jennifer Lauren Martin, Fernanda Muñoz-Newsome, Nkisi, and more

G31 exhibitions also announced, including a solo presentation by Aziza Kadyri and a group show featuring Che Applewhaite, Noah Bador, and Parwana Haydar.

Somerset House Studios, the dynamic hub for experimental arts and interdisciplinary collaboration in the heart of London, is pleased to announce the return of its flagship event, AGM 2025, taking place on Friday 17 October 2025. AGM presents an evening of bold performance, showcasing the innovative work of artists in residence and beyond.

Conceived in dialogue with the rich architecture and layered histories of Somerset House, this year’s AGM inhabits the hidden spaces underneath the courtyard and its surrounding winding passageways, seldom open to the public. The performances will unfold as a series of subterranean encounters, drawing on the themes of concealment, porosity, and alter-egos. Beneath the surface, familiar conventions fade, and the boundaries between us dissolve. The evening will include presentations by Studios residents and friends, artists, musicians, and performers: Paul Maheke with Nenni and Adrian Barstad Andresen, Gray Wielebinski with Manuka Honey and agustine zegers, Jennifer Lauren Martin, Fernanda Muñoz-Newsome, and Nkisi with guests. Together, they will explore moments of transition: journeys, rituals, and the relationship between the living and those who have passed.

The night will present new performance works spread through the passages and arches of the lower levels, which sit on the site of what’s known as the Deadhouse - an otherworldly secret underground passageway with 17th Century gravestones from a Royal chapel that was once on this site. Choreographer, dance artist, and somatic researcher Fernanda Muñoz-Newsome activates the labyrinthine architecture of this site, drawing on the Mesopotamian myth of Inanna’s descent to the underworld in her performance set your ear down, set your mind to the ground, combining voice, movement, and echoing sound. Paul Maheke’s meditative performance The Origin of Death, with musicians Nenni and Adrian Barstad Andresen, explores interconnectedness and the dialogue between dance, sound, and identity. Utilising science fiction tropes, found and written texts and sketches, music and movement, the performance hinges on alienation from others, and the border between life and death. Jennifer Lauren Martin continues and builds upon her performance-cum-soundscape Relations in the Ditch, which explores the grief of broken friendships. Martin stages a heated argument between three friends, navigating issues of betrayal and co-dependence.

Somerset House Studios artist Gray Wielebinski with producer, DJ, and astrologer Manuka Honey and olfactory artist agustine zegers collaborate on a new performance interrogating how cheerleading, a symbol of hyper-femininity and American patriotic ritual, might be made subcultural. Evoking the haunting Texas landscape from Gray Wielebinski’s and Manuka Honey’s childhoods, the work reflects on the twilight of the American empire, queering mainstream culture and tradition. Musician, producer, and Studios resident Nkisi will programme a series of sound collages, inviting artists Solomon Garçon, Francesca Heart, and Aeson Zervas to contribute audio alongside her own mix. The collages will form part of an audio-visual installation, played throughout the evening beneath Somerset House’s courtyard.

Alongside the news of AGM 2025, Somerset House Studios shares the next two exhibitions in their project space G31. Open 19 September - 9 November, G31 hosts the second edition of Studio 01, an ongoing exhibition series presenting the work of three early-career visual artists, Che Applewhaite, Noah Bador, and Parwana Haydar, concluding their 18-month residency in the Studios supported by Jerwood. Working across moving image, sound and installation, the three artists share a configuration of intimate works considering the resonance of memory, place, and how personal and systemic narratives interrelate.

From 21 November 2025 - 15 March 2026, multidisciplinary artist Aziza Kadyri will present an exhibition of newly commissioned work developed as part of Somerset House Studios x UAL Creative Computing Institute's 12-month Creative Technologies Fellowship. Kadyri's new immersive, interactive exhibition for G31 continues her ongoing worldbuilding series. The installation supports the evolving narrative of a trickster figure - the artist’s alter ego - while inviting viewers into a fragmented childhood memory where reality and dream converge. Through scenographic elements, tactile interventions, sound, and open-ended storytelling, the work blurs the line between performer and audience, memory and invention.

Gray Wielebinski, Manuka Honey and agustine zegers’ performance has been made possible through the generous support of dean’s bottom.