The Horror Show! Exhibition comes to Somerset House this Halloween

"The harder the times, the more we need Horror. A safe space to face fear. So​ roll up, and let the alchemical archetypes, Monster, Ghost and Witch, guide you through a subversive story of British culture…”

-Iain Forsyth and Jane Pollard, co-curators of The Horror Show!

Somerset House presents The Horror Show!: A Twisted Tale of Modern Britain, a major exhibition exploring how ideas rooted in horror have informed the last 50 years of creative rebellion. The show looks beyond horror as a genre, instead taking it as a reaction and provocation to our most troubling times.

The Horror Show! A Twisted Tale of Modern Britain at Somerset House, London 2022. Image by Stephen Chung for Somerset House

The last five decades of modern British history are recast as a story of cultural shapeshifting told through some of our country’s most provocative artists. The Horror Show! offers a heady ride through the disruption of 1970s punk to the revolutionary potential of modern witchcraft, showing how the anarchic alchemy of horror – its subversion, transgression and the supernatural – can make sense of the world around us. Horror not only allows us to voice our fears; it gives us the tools to stare them down and imagine a radically different future.

The Horror Show! A Twisted Tale of Modern Britain at Somerset House, London 2022. Image by Stephen Chung

​Featuring over 200 artworks and culturally significant objects, this landmark show tells a story of the turbulence, unease and creative revolution at the heart of the British cultural psyche in three acts – Monster, Ghost and Witch. Each act interprets a specific era through the lens of a classic horror archetype, in a series of thematically linked contemporaneous and new works.

When: 27 October 2022 - 19 February 2023 , Where: Somerset House, Strand, London WC2R 1LA

Price: £16.50/£12 concessions.