Hello and welcome to The Courtauld Gallery. My name is Barnaby Wright and I'm the Curator
of this current exhibition of work by Peter Doig here at The Courtauld.
The paintings in this exhibition transport you through a range of different places places
that are part of Doig's life and his painterly imagination. There are paintings of Trinidad,
pictures that pay homage to the musical traditions and cultures of the island that Peter Doig is so
attached to and profoundly engaged with. There's a remarkable picture of a skier set in an Alpine
landscape, a skier transformed into the figure of an artist embarked on an epic creative journey and
then there is a major new painting of London that Peter Doig has made since he returned
to the city. It shows a canal scene but not as you've ever imagined it before. One of London's
historic canals is turned into a blaze of great color but it's a picture as many of the works in
the exhibitions are that are also deeply rooted in the art of the past, particularly artists who
are represented in The Courtauld's permanent collection. Painters of the Impressionist and
post-Impressionist movement, from Monet and Manet through to Van Gogh and Gauguin and Cezanne. These
pictures really connect with those painterly traditions which Doig reinvents and recasts in
his own work. The painting 'Music Shop' depicts a great hero of his, the Soca musician Shadow
dressed in his trademark skeleton costume. Shadow died a few years ago and in many ways
this painting is Doig's homage to him. He depicts Shadow outside of a music shop which is based on
a real music shop in Port of Spain but rather than showing the shop's interior, Doig creates
the idea of the shop being a portal or gateway on to the island itself and beyond one can see
the shoreline of Trinidad with smaller islands outlying through the windows. This idea of setting
the music shop against the shoreline of Trinidad came in part from a painting in The Courtauld's
collection. Gauguin's The Dream, a picture that Doig has known and loved for many years.
It too has a vista that one doesn't know whether it's imagined or real onto a landscape beyond.
[Music] As well as the monumental paintings that surround me here,
we are also showing a very special display of Doig's recent etchings which are presented
in our Drawings Gallery. These etchings have never been shown before. Doig made
them mostly in 2017 following the death of his close friend, the poet Derek Walcott.
In the last few years of Walcott's life, Doig and he became friends and together they produced
a book called 'Morning, Paramim' which was a selection of Doig's paintings and poems that
Walcott had written inspired by them. I think for Doig, Walcott opened up his paintings in new ways,
surprising ways in some instances and so these etchings are a way for Doig to continue that
creative dialogue and draw out and experiment with themes from his paintings. This exhibition
is the first museum show of Peter Doig's work in the UK for 10 years so it's a great opportunity
to come and see his new and recent paintings and prints, but it's a unique opportunity to
see them in the context of The Courtauld Gallery's earlier collection, in the context of painters and
paintings that have inspired him throughout his career. We very much look forward to welcoming you
to The Courtauld Gallery for this exhibition which runs until the 29th of May. [Music]