One of the most influential artists of our time, David Hockney invites viewers to slow down and notice the extraordinary within the everyday in his first exhibition at Serpentine North in Kensington Gardens.

Created specifically for this presentation, Hockney’s new paintings extend his lifelong fascination with the act of looking, affirming his belief that simple beauty is worth celebrating. He said:  said: “I have always believed that art should be a deep pleasure…There is always, everywhere, an enormous amount of suffering, but I believe that my duty as an artist is to overcome and alleviate the sterility of despair… New ways of seeing mean new ways of feeling… I do believe that painting can change the world.”

The exhibition is conceived in close collaboration with the artist and brings Hockney’s celebrated ninety-metre-long frieze A Year in Normandie to London for the first time. Inspired by the Bayeux Tapestry, this monumental work captures the changing seasons at the artist’s former studio in Normandy. In the context of the exhibition at Serpentine, it opens a dialogue with the surrounding nature of Kensington Gardens.

The exhibition unveils a new body of work by the celebrated British artist, comprising five still lifes alongside five portraits that depict members of the artist’s close circle, including his family and carers. These paintings are united by their frontal composition and by the recurring motif of a gingham tablecloth that provides the setting for each composition. In these new works Hockney combines abstract and figurative modes of representation. For the artist, all figurative painting is inherently abstract, so long as it exists upon a flat surface.

Accompanying the exhibition, Serpentine and Franz und Walther Koenig will publish a catalogue designed by the artist. The publication will bring together new and insightful contributions from Marco Livingstone and Olivia Laing. Generously illustrated in colour throughout, it also features an extensive conversation between David Hockney and Serpentine’s Artistic Director Hans Ulrich Obrist.

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Image: David Hockney: A Year in Normandie and Some Other Thoughts about Painting, installation view, Serpentine North, 2026 © David Hockney. Photo: George Darrell