Peter Doig
Painting For A Poet (DW), 2025
Oil on canvas
300 x 350 cm

Peter Doig
Rain In The Port Of Spain
(White Oak), 2015
Distemper on linen
301 x 352 cm

Peter Doig
Lions (Ghost), 2024
Distemper on linen
275 x 349.9 cm

I arrived at the gallery a few minutes ahead of the booked time having made an early start, visiting the bakers in Hackney before catching the train to Highbury...

Walking into the first low ceilinged gallery space I realised that something was wrong. The building that I had expected to visit was light and airy with views out into the park. This was not that and I noticed almost immediately that there was a considerable florescent element in the gallery lighting. The diffraction grating confirmed my expectation of chromatically degraded light.

The sound systems looked impressive but were only providing background 'music'.

I wandered around the gallery spaces and could really not focus on the paintings as I knew the extent to which they were not essentially visible, flattened by the poor lighting. The three paintings in the central gallery didn't suffer to quite the same extent but I was aware that the chimney of daylight and two high windows was not the way that I remembered the building at all.

This was a very disappointing art gallery visit. Sometimes expectations are dashed for whatever reason. This was undoubtedly one of those!

So, having looked at the view of the memorial on the way to the Serpentine, on the way back I stopped! It reminds me of the drinking fountain in the middle of Victoria Park.

Both, in isolation, are somewhat strange concoctions of elements evoking 'other' sensibilities.

The Albert Memorial
Kensington Gardens

Back at home I read up on the history and found that the re-development of the Serpentine Gallery was completed in February 1998. ChatGTP put it as follows:- Concerns about UV damage, thermal instability, and inconsistent lux levels pushed many galleries toward fully controlled artificial environments, even in buildings never designed for that approach. The 1998 refurbishment, led by John Miller + Partners, followed this logic closely - prioritising conservation standards and curatorial flexibility over experiential or perceptual quality.