Distilled Moments

Install shot: Gauchos, Oil on Canvas, 130 × 180 cm, 2025

This Self initiated ‘pop up’ solo presentation took place at London’s General Assembly (Gallery 1) in Mayfair on July 23rd and 24th, 2025.

Documentation below includes accompanying curatorial text and images.

Curated by Marjolaine Delsupexhe Cesarini

Distilled moments is the first London solo show of the British artist Tom Evans. Fresh out of the Royal College of Art, where he completed his Master in Painting, Toms’ painting style stems from a sustained and dedicated drawing practice and the interplay between painting and drawing on the painting's surface. This exhibition aims to capture the essence of healing moments of the artist. Whether it is through addressing intergenerational masculinity, taking stills from his father’s life as a subject, or projecting himself within his own painting to be captured in one of his subjects, solace is found within his works.

Through these vivid strokes and hues, Distilled moments is the witness of entangled souvenirs, encapsulating Tom's intimate relationship with his father, and his importance in his life. As a director of photography for commercials, Tom's dad used to leave for weeks on end to all parts of the world, coming back with suitcases overflowing with stills of his shots. Painting his souvenirs from a close or almost foreign past, he sometimes dreamed up from the stills (“My dad would be gone for weeks and all I had was my imagination to wonder where he was”) Tom addresses his childhood imagination, and goes on a quest of solace, and reflection of self-discovery, making memories the motor of his work. Within his lyrical painting style, there is a genuine commitment to vulnerability and reflection on the past, nostalgia and his childhood imagination.

As part of this reflection, Tom listens to the echo of his father's footsteps through society, in which lies parts of Evans' exploration: the delicate balance between personal legacy and public perception. His paintings do not merely depict memories; they interrogate them. His father's stills are the images of a world that has profoundly metamorphosed. The images his father brought back from distant cultures, become in Tom's hands an exploration of what it means to engage with another's story. His work thus invites us to reflect on our own roles within larger narratives of cultural exchange and environmental responsibility. In Distilled Moments, we are not only witnesses to Tom's journey of self-discovery and healing but are also called upon to consider our own legacies and the echoes they leave behind in the world.

– Marjolaine Delsupexhe Cesarini