Art
NOV 2025
This week, after spending a few consecutive weekends in one place, I noticed that I was feeling a little uninspired by my city. It’s not a feeling I experience often, especially after months of much travel, but perhaps that’s exactly why it caught me off guard… I’ve grown used to movement, to change and to newness. Staying still for too long made London feel repetitive, almost muted.
At first, I blamed it on a bit of cabin fever, but I know it goes deeper than that. I’ve always believed that our thoughts shape our reality and by seeing London as dull or uninspiring, I was unconsciously creating that version of it for myself.
PETER DOIG. My favorite piece of the show (besides the speakers)
Everything shifted this Sunday. I decided to visit the new Peter Doig exhibition, House of Music, at the Serpentine Gallery, partly because he is one of my favorite artists and partly because on Sundays the space comes alive with sound. Every week, the gallery hosts Sound Service, where musicians play vinyl on restored speakers from the 1920s to the 1960s.
The experience was completely transportive. Doig’s show brings together twenty-five years of paintings exploring the relationship between art, sound and memory. His time in Trinidad is woven through the work and the sound of the vinyl filled the room with such grooviness, making the paintings feel even more alive, as though the music and the colours were in conversation.
Walking through, I was reminded of how easily we forget to seek beauty. London is an endlessly stimulating city, but it’s also a city of villages. It’s so easy to stay within your own small radius and routines, forgetting that just beyond that comfort zone lies an entire world of art, sound and life waiting to reawaken you.
There’s something slightly psychedelic about Doig’s world, not in a literal sense, but in how it shifts your perception. The paintings in this show dissolve boundaries between senses, sound becomes colour, memory becomes landscape and emotion takes form. The whole exhibition feels like a strong reminder that creativity, like consciousness, expands when we allow ourselves to look and listen differently.
I walked out of House of Music that afternoon feeling reconnected to creativity, to London and to myself. Inspiration doesn’t just arrive, it’s something we have to keep seeking. Sometimes, all it takes is one Sunday and a room full of colour and sound to remember that.
