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Usually the knowledge of what artists listen to as they work is beside the point. Jenny Saville could be listening to Now! That’s What I Call Music 15 for all the difference it makes — we’ll still meet the work in silence.
Yet the way Peter Doig approaches the combination of music and art at the Serpentine is surprisingly successful simply because it really goes for it. Doig has worked with sound technician Laurence Passera to install some huge vintage analogue cinema speakers into the space — 1950s Klangfilm speakers, if you must — which look spectacular, almost sculptures in their own right. They pump out selections from Doig’s vinyl record collection as you view selections of his work which particularly focus on his time in Trinidad.
The exhibition is called House of Music and it does have that immediate intimacy, with easy chairs to lounge in and tables to encourage groups to sit at, and chat. Often galleries encourage visitors to linger and not just steam through to get to the shop at the end, but this really is one where you’ll abide by that. And indeed the whole show is about the communal stimulus created when art and music mix.
Sultry, erotic and elegant
In the moodily lit east gallery the work on the walls features images of musicians, dancing nudes on roller-skates, fantastical scenes and a kind of sultry eroticism that lingers on the body and sensual movements. It is dominated on one side by Music of the Future (2002-2007), a large painting of a tranquil night scene where people mill between buildings on a riverside, the atmosphere one of sleepless summer heat, sociable meanderings, the pull of music and the dreamy allure of the water.
Blue Nude (2015) features a blue-faced woman luminous in a forest at night, where more figures emerge out of shadows, an image of folkloric rites, Pan-ish gaiety and devilment. The music serves as a mood setting, but holds you too, almost lulls you into reclining on one of the easy chairs in the low light. Jazz was the predominant soundtrack during our viewing, Lloyd Miller’s Orientations bringing a steamy exoticism that made it feel like stepping into a Tennessee Williams play. Later though, Duke Ellington brings an elegant sophistication as if these are long nights for talking as well as, well, nudity.
Nearby is an image of the late Emheyo Bahabba, an artist friend of Doig’s from the Port of Spain in Trinidad. It’s called “I do not sing because I am happy. I sing the song because it is about happiness. Embah” (2017). Embah is Doig’s nickname for him, and he features him in jacket, white cowboy hat, plucking at a tiny guitar or ukelele. He radiates out music, light, soul, which further seems to seep into the room. These are works about people, flesh and blood, and the magic they can create; it’s about what brings us close, with music a kind of binding force here. In the central north gallery, the light comes in to reveal the analogue central system for the music, with another Batman-esque speaker atop it. A pleasingly analogue rig, where the vinyl is spun and where guest musicians including Brian Eno and Cat Power will spin records at a special Sound Service sessions.
It feels like a dancefloor waiting to spring to life, and here the bright works on the walls are three large paintings showing lions on the streets of Port of Spain. Lions (Ghost) (2017) has two of the beasts playfully wrestling
in a building, but out of the windows in the pink gloaming there are two men not so playfully grappling.
On the other walls Rain in the Port of Spain (White Oak) (2015) shows a lion skulking outside a prison as the washed-out ghost of a man walks down the street. Here the lion is power, control, oppression — and the lingering post-colonial spirit of violence, the stain of history informing the present. You sense that the imagery will shift in meaning according to what is playing in the room, but rebellion is in the air. For all the seating in
the next room, the west gallery, it feels conspiratorial not cosy. An untitled piece from 2025 has ghostly figures drifting through an old house, like memories of a past which cannot be dispelled.
The music works as a connective element between the spirits and the bodies here, provoking physicality but also a drift into inner worlds, old memories or current fantasies. It makes for an intoxicating mix, the perfect show for Doig’s spectral and surreal work. Doig and Serpentine Galleries director Hans Ulrich Obrist have conjured something unique with this space, which feels oddly like a house party where you don’t mind being sober. Miraculous.
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