Somerset House Studios to present a new film and installation, Enclosure, by resident artist and filmmaker Jenkin van Zyl, co-commissioned with Film and Video Umbrella and HOME Manchester, opening 24th September – 29 November 2026.
Enclosure is a large-scale installation and film that fills the Lancaster Rooms at Somerset House. The film explores what happens to obsolete technologies that have outlasted the society that created them, examining the desire for self-preservation in a world defined by extreme commodification.
Enclosure is set within a decaying facility that’s attempting to hold on to its former glory. It once allowed tourists to inhabit “Cherubs”, the replicated bodies of celebrities. Unfolding over a single day, the film follows Mercy, a former starlet who had previously lent her likeness to the programme, who is determined to terminate her own Cherub, now an obsolete relic. Their ritual goes wrong, and instead of severing their connection, Mercy inadvertently frees the Cherub from her glass cage, unleashing chaos.
A current through Jenkin van Zyl’s work, the protagonists and the worlds of his films “escape” beyond the screen, in the form of sculptures and objects that pervade van Zyl’s oeuvre. This installation invites visitors into the world of Enclosure to traverse through the material remains of the facility: fairground signage, holograms, inflatable cocoons, decaying ephemera. Mirroring the film, the installation portrays a world of decay and collapse, with a chill in the air.
Jenkin van Zyl: Enclosure, 24th September – 29th November 2026, Lancaster Rooms, Somerset House
Free / Pay What You Can
After premiering at Somerset House Studios in September 2026 as part of its 10th anniversary celebrations, Enclosure will tour to HOME, Manchester, 26th February – 16th May 2027. Full Somerset House Studios 10th Anniversary programme here
About the artist
Jenkin van Zyl is an artist and filmmaker who practices across film, performance, writing and sculpture, constructing hallucinatory, theatrical worlds that explore the power and politics of fantasy. Drawing from fringe communities, he explores the vital world-building that occurs within these environments, while examining how broader societal politics infiltrate worlds designed to escape them. His previous films followed the hazing of latex gods in the desert of Looners (2019), ghouls baking cakes into buried aircraft for Machines of Love (2021), rats competing in a dance marathon for Surrender (2023) and doppelgangers in a sorting facility in Lost Property (2025). Jenkin van Zyl has been a resident at Somerset House Studios for three years.
