Artist Peter Doig 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.
House of Music transforms the gallery into an immersive listening environment, redefining it as a space for multisensory experience. Bringing together Peter Doig’s recent paintings, the exhibition marks the first time sound is directly integrated into the artist’s practice as a central expressive element. The show features two sets of rare, restored analogue speaker systems, originally designed for cinemas and large auditoriums.
Music selected by Doig from his extensive archive of vinyl records and cassette tapes—collected over several decades—is played through 1950s wooden Klangfilm Euronor high-fidelity speakers. Each painting in the exhibition engages with music in a distinct way: some depict spaces where music is played or heard, while others portray musicians performing, dancers in motion, or the communal atmosphere created by sound.
Many of the works were produced during Doig’s years in Trinidad (2002–2021), a period that significantly deepened his relationship with music through sound-system culture and cinema. Drawing on personal memory, found photographs and imagined scenes, the paintings are shaped by the broader cultural context of Trinidad. The exhibition also includes new works created specifically for House of Music in Doig’s London studio.
At the heart of the exhibition is an exceptionally rare Western Electric / Bell Labs sound system, produced in the late 1920s and early 1930s. Developed in response to the technological demands of early sound cinema, this so-called “loud speaking telephone” system consists of valve amplifiers and mains-energised field-coil loudspeakers, designed to usher in the era of talking movies. Salvaged from derelict cinemas across the UK, the system was restored by Laurence Passera, a London-based expert and devoted enthusiast of historic cinematic sound systems, with whom Doig collaborated closely throughout the project. Renowned for their technical mastery, these speakers are considered the great-grandfathers of modern high-end audio, offering a uniquely rich listening experience.
Conceived as a multi-sensory environment, House of Music invites visitors to pause, linger, and engage in both looking and listening, transforming the gallery into a space for contemplation, reflection and conversation. The exhibition title references lyrics from Dat Soca Boat by Trinidadian calypsonian Shadow, a musician greatly admired by Doig and frequently depicted in his work. The exhibition includes Shadow (2019), a portrait of the artist wearing his iconic skeleton costume.
On Sundays, the gallery is activated by Sound Service, a programme of live listening sessions that forms an integral part of the exhibition. Musicians, artists and collectors—including Nihal El Aasar, Olukemi Lijadu, Ed Ruscha, Samuel Strang and Duval Timothy—share selections from their personal collections on the analogue sound systems. Sound Service expands the exhibition’s experiential scope, exploring sound as memory, shared listening as a form of gathering, and the speaker as both sculpture and conduit, while constructing a collective sonic landscape of London.
These informal residencies invite special guests to present selected tracks and audio samples, responding to one another through unexpected acoustic exchanges in front of a live audience. Participants include Lizzi Bougatsos, Dennis Bovell, Brian Eno, Andrew Hale, Linton Kwesi Johnson, with further contributors to be announced.
