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Serpentine is honoured to present House of Music, a new project by one of today’s leading British artists: Peter Doig. The exhibition is presented from 10 October 2025 to 8 February 2026 and marks a return to Serpentine South for Doig who first exhibited at the gallery in 1991 as a finalist in the Barclays Young Artist Award.

Accompanying Doig’s new and recent paintings with sound for the first time, the exhibition highlights the significance of other disciplines to the artist’s practice, including music and film, alongside the importance of sites of communal gathering and creative exchange.

Envisaged as a multi-sensory environment, visitors are invited to pause and linger as they look and listen. House of Music transforms the gallery into a listening space, bringing together  paintings by Doig and sound broadcast through 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, play through a set of ‘high fidelity’ 1950s wooden Klangfilm Euronor speakers.

Peter Doig said: “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. Music, being an invisible art form, is open to interpretation within the mind’s eye, and reflections from the mind’s eye are often what I’m attempting to depict in my work. Many visual artists have a connection to music, whether as listeners while working or as creators. I’m excited by the idea of inviting people to share music they love, or perhaps music they’ve made themselves.”

Bettina Korek, CEO and Hans Ulrich Obrist, Artistic Director, Serpentine said: “We are pleased to present House of Music, a new project by Peter Doig. Best known for his painting, Doig’s deep engagement with music and cinema is less widely known. Building on his earlier presentation STUDIOFILMCLUB, this exhibition invites audiences to explore these facets of his practice. House of Music weaves new and recent paintings with immersive sound installations, transforming the gallery into a shared, multisensory space. At its core is a fluid exchange between disciplines, an approach integral to Serpentine’s programme. Part of our ongoing series that reveals artists through unexpected lenses, this show offers a fresh encounter with Doig’s work. We look forward to welcoming him and his collaborators as they bring the space to life with their vinyl collection.”

Each painting in the exhibition engages with music in a different way: Painting for Wall Painters (Prosperity P.o.S.),2010–2012, Music of the Future, 2002–2007, Maracas, 2002–2008 and Speaker/Girl, 2015, honour the different spaces and ways that music is experienced. Other works portray musicians performing (including Embah in Paris, 2017; Shadow, 2019) and people dancing or listening to music (Fall in New York (Central Park), 2002–2012; 2 Girls, 2017). 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.

At the centre of the exhibition is an original Western Electric / Bell Labs sound system, produced in the late 1920s and early 1930s. Developed to respond to the demands of modern movie sound, this extremely rare ‘loud speaking telephone’ consists of valve amplifiers and mains-energised field-coil loudspeakers, which were designed specifically to herald in the new era of ‘talking movies’. These speakers were salvaged from derelict cinemas across the UK by Laurence Passera, with whom Doig has collaborated closely on this project. Laurence Passera is a London-based expert and devoted enthusiast of cinematic sound systems. His study of ‘class A triode’ sound technology ultimately led him to the early pioneering cinematic sound systems. The speakers provide a distinctive listening experience, thanks to the technical excellence of their design, which positions them as the forebears of modern high-end audio.

Doig says: “I invited Laurence to be part of the exhibition because of his long-running project to rescue and restore Western Electric sound systems. His labour has resulted in one of the most important systems of its kind in the world. This has been hidden away the studio in Silvertown, only to be heard by a select few, up until now.”

On the walls that surround the sound system are three large-scale paintings depicting lions roaming freely through Port of Spain, Trinidad. They reference the Lion of Judah, a recurring figure in Rastafari imagery across mural paintings in Port of Spain, a symbol of pride, resistance, and spiritual force. Doig has returned to this motif in his work since 2015, folding it into a larger interest in collective identity and iconography.

The title House of Music, refers to lyrics of the 2011 song Dat Soca Boat by Trinidadian calypsonian musician Shadow, who Doig admires and has depicted in his paintings over the years. A portrait of the musician in his iconic skeleton suit, Shadow, 2019, is also included in the exhibition.

On Sundays, the space is activated by Sound Service, a series of live listening sessions where guest musicians and artists play tracks from their own music collections on the Western Electric and Bell Labs system. On select evenings, visitors will encounter new and unexpected acoustic exchanges between invited guests. An integral part of the exhibition, Sound Service fosters sonic dialogues while exploring sound as memory, listening as gathering, and the loudspeaker as sculpture and conduit.

Sunday Sound Service participants include: Dare Balogun, Cafe OTO, Jerald ‘Coop’ Cooper, Andrew Cranston with John MacLean, Nihal El Aasar, Danny Fitzgerald, Lloyd Foster, Cyrus Goberville, David Harrison, Arthur Jafa, Behrang Karimi, Ruby Khaira, Mark Leckey, Olukemi Lijadu, Sean O’Hagan, Basma Osman, Radio Alhara, James Righton, Ed Ruscha, Sam Strang, Soul Jazz Records, Duval Timothy, and more soon to be announced.

Evening Sound Service participants include: Lizzi Bougatsos, Dennis Bovell, Brian Eno, Andrew Hale, Linton Kwesi Johnson, Cat Power, Roger Robinson, and more soon to be announced.

These informal residencies are intended to extend the themes of the exhibition’s ideas: sound as memory, shared listening as gathering, the speaker as both sculpture and conduit.