At a time defined by speed, saturation and constant visual demand, returning to David Hockney feels satisfyingly reassuring. His work asks us to slow down. At his exhibition at the Serpentine North Gallery, he insists on attention, repetition and patience, reminding us that looking can still be a meaningful act. His landscapes ae not about nostalgia, but about accepting change, observed over time. Even his use of digital tools is calm and untroubled, treating technology simply as another way of seeing. Hockney offers continuity. His is a voice that remains confident, humane and quietly optimistic in a world that rarely pauses. As Hockney has put it, “The world is very very beautiful if you look at it, but most people don’t look very much.”
At the centre of this show is A Year in Normandie, the monumental 90-metre frieze created between 2020 and 2021, now shown in London for the first time. Inspired by the Bayeux Tapestry, the work unfolds horizontally, season by season, tracing the rhythms of the landscape surrounding Hockney’s former studio in northern France. “I’m excited to present an exhibition at Serpentine in 2026 on such a momentous year for the Bayeux Tapestry, one of the oldest and most remarkable artworks.” Trees bloom and fade, fields thicken and thin, light shifts almost imperceptibly. In passages depicting blossoming orchards, freshly cut hay bales and the stark geometry of winter branches, nothing dramatic happens, and that is precisely the point.
David Hockney, A Year in Normandie, 2020-2021 (detail). Composite iPad painting. © David Hockney 2023.
Photo: Jean-Pierre Gonçalves de Lima.
Made on an iPad during the early months of 2020, when Hockney produced over a hundred images in quick succession, the frieze is often discussed through the lens of technology. Yet its true subject is observation. Hockney returns to the same views again and again, recording not spectacle but change itself. The result is quietly immersive, less about individual images than about duration. You begin to sense time passing not in days or months, but in colour, density and atmosphere. His vivid, almost radiant palette and flat planes of colour recall both Impressionism and a distinctly contemporary visual language.Installed at Serpentine North, the work feels particularly attuned to its surroundings. Beyond the gallery walls, Kensington Gardens continue their own seasonal cycle, mirroring the world depicted inside. The boundary between representation and reality softens. You are not simply looking at a landscape, you are inhabiting a shared rhythm.
The exhibition also includes more recent works, among them a series of still lifes and portraits made in 2025, alongside pieces such as London, 2023, which anchor the show in the present. These works shift the focus from the expansive to the intimate, reinforcing Hockney’s lifelong preoccupation with perception, perspective and the act of looking. Across six decades, from photographic collages to iPad drawings, his practice has remained remarkably consistent in its curiosity about how we see the world.
I particularly like that this exhibition focuses on a single, resonant idea: that sustained looking still matters. In an era of relentless speed and visual overload, Hockney’s Normandie feels like an act of quiet defiance.
So, come to see it, linger, allow time to unfold. Switch off your phone. Just look.
David Hockney: A Year in Normandie and Some Other Thoughts about Painting
Serpentine North Gallery
West Carriage Drive, London W2 2AR
12 March–23 August 2026
More information and tickets, HERE.
Author: Lina Ress
Hockney’s photo: David Hockney, Normandy, 2021. © David Hockney. Photo: Jonathan Wilkinson
You may like to read about last year’s exhibition, David Hockney 25; or explore other exciting art shows currently in London, such as Seurat and the Sea (The Courtauld Gallery) or Lucian Freud: Drawing into Painting (The National Portrait Gallery).
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