Peter Doig: House of Music
Serpentine presents a new project by Peter Doig that explores the role of music, film, and sites of communal gathering, listening and creative exchange within his practice.
Transforming the gallery into a listening space, House of Music brings together recent paintings and, for the first time, integrates sound into 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.
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. The speakers offer a unique listening experience due to the technical mastery achieved in their construction that places them as the great grandfathers of modern ‘hi-end’ audio.
Envisaged as a multi-sensory environment, visitors are invited to pause and linger as they look and listen, transforming the gallery into a place of contemplation, reflection and conversation. The title House of Music, refers to lyrics of the song Dat Soca Boat by Trinidadian calypsonian musician Shadow, who Doig admires and has depicted in his paintings over the years. Shadow, 2019 – a portrait of the musician in his iconic skeleton suit is also included in the exhibition. On Sundays, the space will be activated by Sound Service, a series of live listening sessions. Musicians, artists and collectors – including Nihal El Aasar, Olukemi Lijadu, Ed Ruscha, Samuel Strang and Duval Timothy – will share selections from their collections on the analogue systems. Sound Service is imagined as an integral part to the project that aims to expand the registers of experience in House of Music, foster dialogues through the act of shared listening, and construct a sonic landscape of London These informal residencies are meant to extend the exhibition’s ideas: sound as memory, shared listening as gathering, the speaker as both sculpture and conduit.
Sound Service evenings will invite special guests to share their selected tracks and audio samples responding to one another in new and unexpected acoustic exchanges in front of a live audience. Participants will include Lizzi Bougatsos, Dennis Bovell, Brian Eno, Andrew Hale, Linton Kwesi Johnson and more to be announced.
Biographies
Peter Doig (b. 1959, Edinburgh, Scotland) grew up in Trinidad and Canada before moving to London to study at Saint Martin’s School of Art and Chelsea School of Art. Since 2002, he has divided his time between London and Trinidad where he set up a studiofilmclub, an influential repertoire cinema club he hosted in his studio in Laventille.
Major survey exhibitions include Tate Britain, London (2008, travelled to ARC/Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris and Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt, Frankfurt am Main, Germany, 2008–09); No Foreign Lands, National Gallery of Scotland, Edinburgh (2013, travelled to Musée des beauxarts de Montréal, 2014); Fondation Beyeler, Riehen/Basel (2014–15); National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo (2020); and Courtauld Gallery, London (2023). In 2023–24, he curated the exhibition Reflections of the Century at Musée d’Orsay, Paris, which placed his works in dialogue with selections from the museum’s collection. Doig taught for many years, notably at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf, Germany, where he held a professorship from 2004 to 2017. He was nominated for the Turner Prize in 1994, and in 2008 was awarded the Wolfgang Hahn Prize by the Gesellschaft für Moderne Kunst of the Museum Ludwig in Cologne, Germany. Doig was awarded the Praemium Imperiale Prize for Painting in 2025.
Drawn from a young age to London subculture, Laurence Passera was immersed in both music as well fashion through assisting iconic ‘Buffalo’ stylist Ray Petri. Whilst developing his love of image and technique as a fashion photographer, he committed equally to researching ‘audio’ in what he saw was a harmonious beauty of music and machine.
His study of ‘class A triode’ sound technology ultimately led him to the early pioneering cinematic sound systems, of which he has become an authority. This in turn, inspired his extensive search and rescue mission across the UK to locate and restore these rare surviving examples of this majestic equipment.
Peter Doig: House of Music is curated in close collaboration with the artist by Natalia Grabowska, Curator at Large, Architecture and Site-Specific Projects, with Lizzie Carey-Thomas, Director of Programmes and Chief Curator, Alexa Chow, Assistant Exhibitions Curator and Hans Ulrich Obrist, Artistic Director. The live programme is co-curated with Kostas Stasinopoulos, Curator, Live Programmes.
