LONDON ASTRAL PROJECTION CLINIC



Peter Doig: House of Music at Serpentine South | By Helena Blomqvist

10.10.25 - 08.02.26



Farewell, Peter Doig.

As “House of Music” comes to a close, marking a successful quadrimester, I geared up to see the show in all of its glory. Before the curtains close, before the speakers are unplugged.  I had a feeling that I had to fight my way through getting tickets to visit. As I was hunting down the Serpentine’s website to snag myself one, the exhibition was marked as “SOLD OUT”. Upon visitation on a rainy London morning, it seemed as if the automatic doors welcomed me into the space with open arms, instilling a sense of tranquility.  I was immediately greeted by Doig’s Painting for Wall Painters, in combination with the skylight on the celing, emitting a stark blue glow. The space enveloped me just like water when diving, as despite the scale of the painting I felt as if I was floating in the room itself. Before I even got to traverse the exhibition, music immediately hit my ears, courtesy of the colossal wooden speakers placed on both ends of the building. 

As I banged a left–entranced by the citrine curtains in combination with the rusty red flooring–I was greeted with Doig’s sonic. The wooden speaker itself, along with its matching chairs create an assembly reminiscent of a cafe or restaurant. The paintings themselves take a back seat to the experience of sitting down and immersing yourself in the music emitted from the speakers, as the work features its own soundtrack of music chosen from Doig’s personal record collection and played through this colossal speaker, salvaged from old cinemas by his colleague Laurence Passera. These relics are sculptures in their own right, with gaping mouths of wood and metal that once echoed behind the screens of British picture houses and auditoriums during the golden age of cinema. As I made my rounds throughout the room, it seemed as if visitors did not come for the paintings, they came to sit down and listen.


Peter Doig: House of Music at Serpentine South, left side

I decided to go back to the entrance instead of continuing down the set path that would lead me to the massive sound system that operates for Sunday Service, as I wanted to savour that moment for last. Instead, I made my way towards the right-side room where light is fully obscured by black-out curtains. The arragement of the seating differs from the room I was previously in, as the recliners are arranged to face the speaker directly, a shift from the communal essence of the brighly lit room to the left. The only source of light comes from the spotlights illuminating the works themselves, furthering the association with the room as a place of spectacle. Facing the same wooden speaker, you are enveloped in Doig’s hazy musical sonic. Where are we now? Why are we here? Nowhere and everywhere, as we are cocooned by a universe of art surrounded by fantasy. 



Peter Doig: House of Music at Serpentine South, right side


As a finissage, one finally arrives at the magnum opus of this show in its entirety. Its as if you’re greeted by God himself, but for audiophiles. The system itself–towering in all its glory–features a singular speaker that I can only imagine can deafen an entire village when blasted at full volume. Minute details that further amplify the system as a stage for sonic experience include records by Louis Armstrong & Duke Ellington and Willie Nelson, amplifiers, cables, and all the rounds. If God is a machine, then Doig’s sound system is one of its disciples.

The space sets a precedent for how the work itself is experienced, and in my case it was full devotion. Figurative details vanish before your eyes in intoxicating washes and inebriated cascades of painterly texture, which flow over canvas, linen, and vellum. Every component disappears into a sea of colors. The production of mood through ultra-fine but never prissy gradations of color is completely engaging. Through combinations of green and purple, pink and yellow, in paint that still appears wet, even though this work was created in the early twenty-first century.  A lion stands alone in a yellow courtyard beside a jailhouse, enraged. Blood drenches its mane, but it stays unbowed. Beyond the columns with statues on top, across a brown wasteland under a red sky as hollow and frightening as a desert, stood the ruins of a devastated city. Doig's lions appear to transport you to an airy dream world, far from the map and history books, but the news from nowhere is actually quite urgent. This painting is one of three history-scale canvases featuring the Lion of Judah that hang in the center of the exhibition, among the oldest speakers. The first painting he created depicts a phantom man stumbling past a yellow and green jail house, while the lion stands in defiance.