As usual for Somerset House Studios commissions, the artwork begins as soon as you enter. The floor and walls of the Lancaster Rooms are a warm, almost putrid pink, the colour of a wrinkled rose petal after a week in stagnant water, feeding only on its own mouldy roots. The shade is quaint and natural yet sinister and synthetic, washed out yet somehow still oppressive. In these otherwise grand rooms, artist and filmmaker Jenkin Van Zyl has created an unsettling environment, a “prosthetic paradise”, as is written in sequence across a mirror, in which to showcase their new experimental film, Enclosure.
The film’s setting is as unsettling as the installation’s decor: a decaying office building with suspicious contraptions, located in an indeterminate future. We slowly learn it was once a facility where tourists could create Cherubs, replicas of themselves that other tourists could inhabit. The film takes place on Founding Day, the annual window to renew or terminate a Cherub. We meet the Hostess, the enterprise’s agent, who is desperate to prolong its legacy, and this Founding Day’s subject, Mercy, a starlet who has come to reclaim her likeness. As the film unfolds in a cryptic but astoundingly creative display, questions of self-image, self-preservation and self-decay pollute Mercy’s decision, revealing the mould at the flower’s root.
Within the context of the show’s other exhibits, Enclosure feels like a fairground ride for a franchise that never existed – or at least no longer exists. Cardboard cutouts, photographs and teen-fan paraphernalia of Van Zyl’s characters pepper the space, under the brash assumption that we remember them from somewhere. But we don’t; in the facility, a future enterprise already bygone, these characters are victims of celebrity ephemera. This is something we can level with, in an age when everyone and their dog is an influencer. Van Zyl shows us that the more personalities we create, the more waste we’ll have to pick up after, or indeed, leave behind. In one room, model pigeons fly in a circle, fixed to a motorised axle that keeps them on the bird in front’s path over and over again. In the next room, a model pigeon lies on the ground, with just enough life left to flap helplessly (much to visitors’ horror and disapproval).
The film sits in its own small enclosure within the show, in a round, silo-like structure that resembles the Cherub’s own enclosure. A dark window at the back reveals the film screen and the audience inside. The enclosure is made for onlookers, like the Cherubs it houses. Once Mercy’s Cherub escapes at the end, this emptiness becomes all too obvious, turning into desperate madness.
Enclosure’s finale is nihilistic and would leave a sense of complete hopelessness if it weren’t for the intense creativity that went into its production. The themes are a veritable indictment of fame and beauty, but with this level of unhinged wit, Enclosure is a show you cannot help but enjoy (if with a slight sense of horror).
Jenkin Van Zyl: Enclosure is on show at Somerset House Studios until 29th November 2026. To find out more, visit their website.
Image: Enclosure (2026) © Jenkin Van Zyl, courtesy of Somerset House.
