Peter Doig – House of Music
10 October – 8 February, 2026
One of my favourite collections of poetry is a collaboration between Nobel Prize winner Derek Walcott and Peter Doig called ‘Morning, Paramin’. In it, the Saint Lucian poet paired up literary responses to paintings by Doig, who was born in Scotland but has spent much of his life in Trinidad.
The book is a stunning Caribbean soundclash of bright phrasings and shadowy colour, and vice-versa. And after Walcott’s death, Doig had a show at the Courtauld in 2023, which included a further series of etchings he created in response to Walcott’s poems from ‘Morning, Paramin’.
Some of those Doig works are in this show at the Serpentine in London, but as you might well have twigged from the title, ‘House of Music’ is as much about the chorus as it is the verse, and the results are really very fun.
At the heart of everything is an imposingly awesome vintage sound system, which sits in the central gallery, accompanied by a pair of giant restored cinema speakers in the two side rooms. The effect – masterminded with the help of audiophile Laurence Passera – is to transform the gallery into a listening space.
About 200 of Doig’s vinyls have been selected to provide a sample of his musical interests. Lloyd Miller’s ‘Orientations’ from 1960 was playing when I wandered around, along with a beautiful choral kyrie from the former French Equatorial Africa by Les Petits Chanteurs de Saint-Laurent. You are likely to be distracted at times by the need to Shazam what’s going on.
As well as being a return home of sorts for Doig, who first exhibited at the gallery as part of the 1991 Barclays Young Artist Award, the show is also something of a rolling house party. Doig has assembled a roster of musicians and artists including Arthur Jafa, Cat Power, Brian Eno and Linton Kwesi Johnson for their own curated moments called ‘Sound Service’. It’ll probably be worth booking these in advance if you want to avoid disappointment.
But what about the paintings? The entry is dominated by a giant canvas patch-worked with flags – a sort of literal musical tapestry by way of introduction. Everything else is much less regimented, and captured in Doig’s usual woozy, lavish palette – like the mesmerising sirens dancing nude, but for their roller-skates, framed in the darkness by a prismatic burst of disco lights.
Even on a tepid Autumn day in London, most of the works ache with the delights of hot summer nights – the spectrum of all the moments where music weaves itself into warm air, from the boom of subwoofers to the tinny strings of a lone acoustic guitar.
The show’s title comes from the lyrics in ‘Dat Soca Boat’ by the late Trinidadian musician The Mighty Shadow, a Doig favourite, who you can spot wielding a guitar while wearing his famed skeleton suit in some of the works.
There are sound systems in the paintings too, as well as parties, street scenes at night, and quieter moments in the panting heat of daytime, with pink boats bobbing on the shoreline. And there are a lot of lions, both as proud Rastafari icons and slightly sleepier looking interpretations of the king of beasts.
It’s really a show where lounging around is more than encouraged by the comfortable veranda chairs and handsomely carved tables, and if you’re anything like me, you’ll probably end up slumped in or at one of them, drinking it all in.
Music of the Future
Wide over the water, but gentle, the night music
requires the sad stars’ accompaniment,
note, true, by sparkling note, and then, a cluster,
a single note spreads to a constellation,
the bass breathes evenly a steady luster,
first a few stars and then a constellation,
first the breaker’s slow clapping, and then, the ovation.
Derek Walcott (from Morning, Paramin, 2016)