Keeping the Vigil

William Hine is pleased to present _Keeping the Vigil_, a solo exhibition of new paintings by Manchester-based artist Gwen Evans on view from 8 October - 14 November, 2026. This will be Evans' second solo exhibition with the gallery. Throughout _Keeping the Vigil_, Evans offers a series of enigmatic glimpses into the private worlds of her protagonists, in which familiar domestic spaces become strange and elusive. Recognisable settings such as bedrooms, living rooms and household corridors become rendered through their imitations as uncanny doubles of themselves, forming a backdrop against which quotidian daily routines take on a disquieting atmosphere. Dark, moonlit perimeters surround illuminated interiors with window frames, ledges, billowing or patterned curtains and architectural openings forming both compositional devices and barriers. Viewers are positioned as quiet onlookers at a voyeuristic remove from the figures within, observing an intimate moment without invitation. The window pane becomes a screen and the domestic interior a stage upon which inscrutable dramas unfold. Evans' treatment of modern domestic life recalls the quiet alienation of twentieth-century American painters, inspired by the urban loneliness present in the work of Edward Hopper and the magical and social realism of George Tooker. As in Hopper's New York interiors, these paintings are populated by figures who appear caught between solitude and the possibility of connection. Yet Evans' characters seem even more acutely depersonalised with simplified gestures and rounded, almost wax-like bodies giving them the appearance of dolls or automatons; alive, but not quite at home in their surroundings.