Transforming the Serpentine Gallery into a listening space, House of Music brings together recent paintings and, for the first time, integrates sound into Peter Doig’s work. The exhibition features two sets of rare, restored analogue speakers, originally designed for cinemas and large auditoriums. Music selected by the artist – from his substantial archive of vinyl records and cassette tapes accumulated over decades – plays through a set of ‘high fidelity’ 1950s wooden Klangfilm Euronor speakers.

Each painting in the exhibition engages with music in a different way: some depict spaces where music is played or heard, others show musicians performing or people dancing. Many of the works were created during Doig’s years in Trinidad (2002–21), a period that deepened his relationship with music through sound-system culture and cinema.

Blending personal memory, found photographs, and imagined scenes, these paintings are shaped by the wider cultural context of Trinidad. The exhibition will also include new paintings, which Doig created specifically for this show in his London studio.

Generally representing people in nameless landscapes – in some of which motifs from Trinidad or Canada can frequently be recognised – Doig’s large-format paintings are often based on private pictorial material or found objects. Their colourfulness, luminosity and enigmatic atmosphere make them fascinating. Doig thereby continues the tradition of great masters such as Gauguin, Bonnard, and Matisse.

In the Romantic sense, Doig’s works convey a sense of yearning in which viewers can lose themselves. His representations of nature, which are often extremely mysterious, are as exotic as they are melancholy and as attractive as they are sinister.

Peter Doig seeks out fragments from contemporary life and civilisation, and integrates them into his works. He takes photos, newspaper cuttings and pictures drawn from pop culture, like album covers and film posters, and uses them as the starting-point for his paintings. The subject matter and painting techniques of the works he creates therefore offer new visual possibilities while nonetheless subtly seeming familiar to viewers.

Peter Doig was born in Edinburgh in 1959 and currently lives and works in New York and Trinidad.

Peter Doig
House of Music
Serpentine South Gallery
London
Through 08 February 2026
www.serpentinegalleries.org

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