A free exhibition of David Hockney artworks comes to London.
One of the great living artists, David Hockney is revered for his vivid landscapes of Yorkshire and Los Angeles, alongside quirky portraits, including an instantly-famous depiction of Harry Styles in a stripy cardigan. Perhaps Hockney's best-known work of all — 1967's A Bigger Splash — is on permanent display at Tate Britain.
Big ticket Hockney retrospectives are frequently hosted in London — including Lightroom's immersive Bigger & Closer (not smaller & further away) — although they usually come with a robust price tag for entry. However, from Thursday 12 March-Sunday 23 August 2026, the Serpentine North gallery in Hyde Park hosts a free exhibition of Hockney's works.
What's more, A Year in Normandie and Some Other Thoughts about Painting features 10 new Hockney works, namely five still lifes and a further five portraits depicting people close to the artist, all pictured around the recurring motif of a gingham tablecloth.
As its title suggests, the show will also feature A Year in Normandie, a 90-metre-long frieze of Hockney's, inspired by the Bayeux Tapestry, and showing the change of seasons at the artist's former studio in Normandy.
It's particularly fitting timing, given the Bayeux Tapestry itself is coming to London this year.
Other works that'll be on display at Serpentine North — all of them created on an iPad, the 88-year-old's canvas of choice in latter life — will be Moon Room, which reflects Hockney's lifelong interest in the cycle of light and time passing; and his Sunrise body of work (part of which appeared in animated form in Piccadilly Circus in 2021). A large-scale printed mural of a treehouse scene from A Year in Normandie will also be displayed in the gallery garden.
Says David Hockney: "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."
A Year in Normandie and Some Other Thoughts about Painting by David Hockney is at Serpentine North, 12 March-23 August 2026
