DARLING BUDS

The Serpentine is hosting a free exhibition of new work from David Hockney this spring. What a gift, writes Mark Hudson

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Serpentine Gallery, London

With the stirrings of spring evident everywhere, it feels like the perfect moment to open an exhibition in which the UK's best-loved artist celebrates the changing of the seasons in a gallery set within one of London's most beautiful parks. All works will be new to British gallery goers, with some so recently completed it looks like the paint's barely dry. And, I almost forgot to mention, admission to this David Hockney show is free.

Hung along the corridor surrounding the Serpentine's North gallery, A Year in Normandie is Hockney's largest work to date: a 90-metre frieze chronicling the changes in light and colour around his studio in northern France, from winter to winter in the Covid year of 2020-21.

If I was initially disappointed to learn that the 200-odd panels are iPad paintings rather than works on canvas, they're so expertly lit that it's hard to believe they're simply print-outs pinned to the wall. The work glows like some endless lightbox circuiting the building, the images segued with a smoothness that could never be achieved with traditional painting. There's an exhilarating sense of a continuous view around Hockney's garden, as though we're walking through time as well as space.