Somerset House Studios celebrates a decade with special programme

Over the last decade, Somerset House Studios has become a vital space for artists working across art, culture and new technologies, shaping the future of creativity. At the heart of Somerset House, the Home of Cultural Innovators, the Studios has supported over 200 artists from diverse global backgrounds to collaborate, experiment and bring bold new ideas to life. The exceptional talent nurtured at the Studios has been internationally recognised, with artists in residence winning the Turner Prize, the Jarman Award, the Cannes Film Festival Critics' Choice Award, and the 2026 BAFTA for Outstanding Debut in the last eighteen months alone. 

Alongside sustained, long-term support for artists, such as subsidised studio space for up to ten years, practical advice and access to a curated community of multi-disciplinary artists, the Studios connects audiences to new work and cutting-edge ideas at every stage of the artistic process. To mark this milestone anniversary, the programme spotlights this distinctive approach to interdisciplinary experimentation, bringing together international artists and expanding through new global partnerships and co-commissions. 

“Since launching in 2016, the Studios has become a home for artists pushing the boundaries of culture, a home with inclusion and innovation at its heart.  For us, community is a form of technology, where collaboration and experimentation foster new ideas, forms and ways of working. At a time of profound uncertainty, artists play a vital role in imagining alternative futures and challenging the status quo. So, in this landmark year, we scale up the Studios’ distinctive cross-disciplinary approach to expand the possibilities of artistic imagination for audiences in London and beyond' Marie McPartlin, Director of Somerset House Studios.

“Somerset House Studios demonstrates a positive commitment to engaging with urgent hypermodern issues. It's uniquely positioned as an institution in London's cultural landscape, which is formed responsively and reactively for and by the artists it hosts- allowing for both immediate artistic responses and deeper, sustained research. It's rare to have that kind of continuity between where work is developed and where it's shown” Jenkin van Zyl, Somerset House Studios artist.

Somerset House Studios at 10 is supported by Glass Castle Foundation and the Manolo Blahnik Foundation.

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Jenkin van Zyl: Enclosure

24 September - 29 November 2026

Lancaster Rooms, Somerset House

Free / Pay What You Can

Somerset House Studios presents a major new exhibition in London of resident Studios artist and filmmaker, Jenkin van Zyl, co-commissioned with Film and Video Umbrella and HOME Manchester. Premiering at Somerset House before travelling to HOME, Enclosure is a specially-commissioned immersive film installation that explores a culture where technological advancement has outpaced our ability to make sense of it. At its core, the film asks what happens when systems built on desire and self-preservation outlast the conditions that created them.

Set within a decaying facility that once allowed tourists to inhabit replicas of other people, Enclosure unfolds over a single day known as Founding Day, the annual window in which Donors must renew or terminate their doubles, known as Cherubs. When the protagonist, Mercy, a starlet who lent her likeness to the programme, arrives to terminate her double, the ritual intended to sever their connection instead draws them closer, until the line between them disappears entirely.

The film will be screened within a large-scale installation at Somerset House’s Lancaster Rooms. Visitors will move through the material remains of the facility: fairground signage, holograms, inflatable cocoons, and decaying ephemera. Mirroring the film, the installation portrays a world that still has the facade of being active, though it has long-since collapsed. 

The work is commissioned by Film and Video Umbrella, Somerset House Studios, and HOME, Manchester, and developed in residence at Somerset House Studios. FVU and HOME are supported using public funding by Arts Council England. After premiering at Somerset House Studios, Enclosure will open at HOME, Manchester from 26 February to 16 May 2027. 

3 Evenings

Experiments in Performance and Technology 

Ayoung Kim, Earshot (Lawrence Abu Hamdan, Caline Matar, Fabio Cervi, Renate Baumane, Hyeongji Yang), Gary Zhexi Zhang, Gazelle Twin, Keiken, Lawrence Lek, Ligia Lewis, Team Rolfes, Xin Liu. Further names to be announced

16, 17, 18 October 2026

25 Wapping Wall

Tickets £25/20

Three Night Pass £60 (general) / £48 (concessions)

3 Evenings is a landmark event presented at East London’s 25 Wapping Wall that will see artists from the Somerset House Studios community and beyond collaborate on a series of public experiments exploring performance and technology. A playful reimagining of 9 Evenings: Theatre and Engineering, a groundbreaking moment in the history of artists working with new technologies which took place in New York in 1966, the event will see performances from artists working across music, dance and visual art unfold throughout the former hydraulic power station.

This radical spirit of experimentation - at the core of the Studios' ethos over the past decade - remains vital for advancing artistic practice and enabling new forms to emerge. Framed across three different live experiments on each of the three nights, the live performances will sit within a wider programme of installations and activations throughout the building, and include world premieres of newly commissioned interactive installations from Ayoung Kim, Keiken and Xin Liu, with further works to be announced.

This event will also launch 3ETV, a unique international networked broadcast in partnership with Pioneer Works (New York) & HEK (House of Electronic Arts) in Basel. 3ETV will reframe 3 Evenings as an evolving artwork for two months beyond the live event through multi-channel broadcast and unconventional streaming interventions, as well as inviting international exchange with additional artist contributions and collaborations.

3 Evenings is supported by Glass Castle Foundation.

Further Somerset House Studio artist and alumni quotes, Somerset House Studios factsheet and 10 Years, 10 Highlights in press pack here.

ENDS