“Music has often influenced my paintings. Songs can be very visual. I’m interested in what they conjure, and I’ve tried over the years to make paintings that are imagistic and atmospheric in the way music can be,” says Peter Doig.
Arguably one of the most exciting British artists working today, Doig was speaking at the preview of “House of Music” which opens this week at the Serpentine in London. “I didn’t want to create my own soundtrack,” he explains. “London is full of people obsessed with music, with extraordinary creativity born out of its diversity: from the Windrush generation to now. We wanted to open this space to that energy.”
That is exactly what “House of Music” does, without ego or pretension: it explores the pivotal role of music, film and communal gathering in Doig’s life and work. And his paintings feel so naturally at home in the intimate Serpentine gallery space, now transformed into a lovely set of rooms, warmly lit and with soft furnishings to encourage us to slow down, recline in the comfy armchairs, and perhaps find solace in the music and the paintings.
“From the very beginning, we wanted to bring painting and music together, to create a multisensory environment where visitors would want to stay, to return, to spend time,” says Hans Ulrich Obrist, Serpentine’s artistic director.
The exhibition’s title, “House of Music,” is a reference to the lyrics of Dat Soca Boat by Shadow, the Trinidadian calypsonian musician much admired by Doig, and who appears in his paintings over the years (a portrait is also displayed in the show). At the heart of the exhibition are two restored analogue speakers, salvaged from old cinema houses in Germany and the UK. These are magnificent examples of early and mid-twentieth-century audio technology: a pair of original 1950s wooden Klangfilm Euronor speakers, and a rare 1920s Western Electric and Bell Labs sound system—a gigantic piece of technology designed at the dawn of the talking movies. From these, music selected from Doig’s vast collection of vinyl and cassette tapes will play daily, chosen by the staff at Serpentine.
And there’s more. Each Sunday until the close of the show in February, in what the team are dubbing “Sound Service,” musicians and DJs (among them Brian Eno, Arthur Jafa, Mark Leckey, Duval Timothy), and from across London’s vibrant music scene will perform on the Western Electric and Bell Labs systems and in dialogue with Doig’s paintings—all of which is free to the public. In short, the Serpentine has truly set out to challenge the potential of the gallery space. And it works.
You enter the gallery to a selection of works chosen by the artist that, in some shape or form, relate to music. These include paintings created between 2002 and 2021, when he lived on the Caribbean island with his family and when music became integral to his life. We see spaces where music happens, and the performers, entertainers, dancers and listeners who inhabit them. As with all of Doig’s work, they draw from memory, from found objects and photographs, and, best of all, from the imagination. They are at once real and dreamy, and this, to my mind, is what makes his art so timeless and absorbing.
The sequence then guides you to a darkened space—the nighttime room— where one of the Klangfilm Euronor speakers dominates one corner. To one side is “Music of the Future,” completed in 2007 and on loan from the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art (the only painting borrowed from a museum; all others are from private collections). To the other is a new painting (one of three) created in response to this exhibition—a large canvas depicting roller-skaters under coloured lights, connecting to Doig’s recurring themes of nightlife, rhythm and movement. The paint was barely dry when the team hung it up the night before the opening. Meanwhile, dotted throughout are armchairs shipped over from Doig’s Trinidad home to encourage us to sit down and take in the atmosphere.
The exhibition then climaxes with the central room and the Western Electric and Bell Labs sound system, surrounded rather cinematically by three of Doig’s large-scale works depicting lions roaming freely through Port of Spain, Trinidad. The Lion of Judah is a recurring figure in Rastafarian mural painting, representing pride, resistance and spiritual force. Doig has returned to this motif repeatedly, folding it into a broader meditation on collective identity and belonging.
“House of Music” marks Doig’s return to Serpentine gallery for the first time since 1991. “We didn’t want to stage a straightforward Peter Doig exhibition,” Lizzie Carey-Thomas, Serpentine’s director of programmes and chief curator, tells me. London’s Courtauld gallery has only recently shown Doig’s work, and besides, the Serpentine can afford to be more experimental. Recent shows, such as last year’s Tomás Saraceno, relied on solar energy and opened the gallery to the surrounding Hyde Park and all its elements to make a brave statement about the fragile environment. With Doig too, the Serpentine team asked how his work might be presented within a more interesting and engaging context.
And music was the natural entry point. Carey-Thomas explains, “Peter has always painted to music; it’s integral to how he works. In Trinidad, he had run these Friday night film clubs in his studio, projecting rare films and playing music through these incredible old speakers. So he really came to sound through film.” These were also deeply social events, something that Carey-Thomas and her team wished to project through the Sunday live sessions.
“Art shouldn’t feel sterile; it should have a pulse,” offers Doig. “We wanted to transform the space from a white gallery into something warmer; more like a salon, a lived-in place. During the making of these paintings, I kept looking at the pieces Matisse made in Morocco, radical works shown in carpeted rooms, hung among curtains and furniture. That warmth, that domesticity, that’s what we wanted here.”
This is also a collaborative venture. The Western Electric/Bell Labs sound system wouldn’t have been possible without the expertise of Laurence Passera, a devoted enthusiast of vintage audio who salvaged it from an old cinema in Wales that had been turned into a bingo hall. Doig says, “These speakers were designed not to be seen, hidden behind the screen to animate what you were watching or hearing. It’s great to make them visible now, to hear and see the sound, and to realize there hasn’t been that much advancement in what sound can be.”
“Many visual artists have a connection to music, whether as listeners while working or as creators,” Doig reflects. “I’m excited by the idea of inviting people to share music they love, or perhaps music they’ve made themselves.”
Seen together, these paintings and sounds form a kind of shared space, one that asks us to listen, to linger, and to experience art not just as image but as rhythm, atmosphere, exchange. And it is a joyful exhibition that reminds us that our connections run deeper than difference; that we share more than we think, more than we know.
“We hope people will come, play, listen, and that new sounds will emerge every day,” Doig says. “It’s about making these private systems public, as with paintings—letting others share in the experience.”
House of Music is at Serpentine South in London from October 10, 2025 to February 8 2026.
For more on the arts, follow my reviews here.