Peter Doig — House of Music

Peter Doig, House of Music, Serpentine and Walther König, 2026

Peter Doig turned the Serpentine into a listening room. This is the book of the show, the size of a record sleeve.

House of Music ran at Serpentine South in London from 10 October 2025 to 8 February 2026. It was the first time Doig made sound part of his work. Recent paintings, many made in Trinidad between 2002 and 2021, hung in a room where music from his own records and tapes played through restored 1950s Klangfilm cinema speakers.

At the centre stood a Western Electric system from the first years of sound film, which Laurence Passera rescued from closed British cinemas. The title comes from Dat Soca Boat by the Trinidadian calypsonian Shadow.

Then the guests of the Sound Service sessions. Brian Eno played the records that changed his life. David Byrne played cassettes he had just found. Ed Ruscha and Jarvis Cocker took turns too. In the last week the choreographer Michael Clark staged Satie Studs among the paintings, in garments by Phoebe Philo.

The book has the paintings, installation views and engineering drawings of the speakers, Michael Bracewell on music and painting, Passera's history of sound in cinemas, poems by Derek Walcott and Linton Kwesi Johnson, and a long conversation between Doig and Hans Ulrich Obrist. Alexa Chow and Natalia Grabowska edited it, and Faye and Gina in Paris designed it.

File it with your records.

Softback in a card record sleeve, 80 pages, 31 by 31 cm. English. Available online and in our shop at Vester Voldgade 106, Copenhagen.