The Serpentine Galleries have announced a major presentation of new works by David Hockney, opening at Serpentine North from March 12 to August 23, 2026. This will be the artist’s first exhibition with the gallery, and admission is free.
The exhibition features significant pieces never before seen in the UK, including digital paintings from his Sunrise series and the acclaimed Moon Room, which continues his enduring exploration of light and temporal passage. Also on view will be A Year in Normandy, a ninety-metre-long frieze inspired by the Bayeux Tapestry that chronicles the shifting seasons at his former Norman home.
His prolific use of the iPad distinguishes Hockney’s recent practice. During the spring of 2020, he created over one hundred works in this medium, capturing with speed and precision the transient effects of light and weather. The resulting images employ a radiant, heightened palette and combine flat planes of colour with a pop sensibility. This period of intense creation expanded into a continuous cycle, documenting the complete transition from spring through to winter.
In a statement, Hockney said: “I’m excited to present an exhibition at Serpentine in 2026.” Bettina Korek, Chief Executive, and Hans Ulrich Obrist, Artistic Director of Serpentine, said: “We are thrilled that David Hockney has accepted our invitation to present new works at Serpentine North in 2026. As a highlight of our Spring/Summer season, the exhibition promises to be a landmark cultural moment. Serpentine is free and open to all, and we look forward to welcoming audiences from near and far.”
Hockney’s career-long inquiry into perception and technology finds new expression in these works. He champions a careful, attentive look at the everyday world, proposing that beauty—found in something as simple as a sunrise—is always worthy of celebration.
For over six decades, David Hockney (b. 1937, Bradford) has maintained a significant presence on the international art scene. He first gained recognition in the early 1960s as a leading figure among a new generation of British artists. His prolific career is marked by his constant reinvention and a devotion to representing the world around him.
Engaging with diverse artistic traditions—from the scroll paintings of China and Japan to the European art canon—Hockney has consistently explored the mechanics of representation. While he has experimented with abstraction, the figure has remained central to his practice. He works from observation, memory, and imagination, sustaining a restless inquiry into the nature of seeing.
His early paintings of the 1960s announced a bold new voice, soon followed by his iconic depictions of Los Angeles swimming pools. Works such as A Bigger Splash (1967) captured the city’s allure from an outsider’s perspective, becoming embedded within the modern visual lexicon.
A critical investigation into perspective led to a complex engagement with photography. His photographic collages of the 1980s, with their Cubist-like fragmentation, challenged the single-point viewpoint of the camera lens. This line of research culminated in the 2001 book and BBC documentary, Secret Knowledge, which argued for the Old Masters’ use of optical devices.
This fascination with technology as a tool for image-making is a throughline in his work, from Polaroid composites and fax drawings to his current embrace of the iPad. Each medium is exploited for its unique potential. This ethos found recent expression in the large-scale digital immersive experience, Hockney’s Eye, staged at Lightroom in London and now touring internationally.
A lesser-known but significant area of his output is his designs for opera, which he approaches with deep concentration. Productions such as The Rake’s Progress (1975) and Turandot (1990) remain in repertoires decades after their premieres.
A recent retrospective, David Hockney 25, at the Fondation Louis Vuitton in Paris—curated by Sir Norman Rosenthal in close collaboration with the artist—showcased more than 400 works. The exhibition highlighted not only his iconic pieces but also placed special emphasis on the last twenty-five years, demonstrating an unwavering creative vitality into the twenty-first century.
David Hockney At Serpentine North 12th March – 23rd August 2026