This January at Hartlepool Art Gallery, established artist-photographer Alice Hawkins presents an extraordinary panoramic portrait of women around the world, taken across the last 20 years. Hawkins works between the worlds of fine art and fashion, and is known for having brought new subjects and situations into fashion photography, and fine art alike.

Often, she captures people who embody what fellow photographer Nick Knight calls “the everyday burlesque” – the theatrical, the outrageous or the larger-than-life.

The Female Gaze: Revisited will examine the changing perceptions of femininity, fashion and gender over the past two decades and will screen for the first time Hawkins’ ethereal fashion films which take the themes of her photography work and elevates them into entrancing dreamscapes from which the viewer will not wish to wake.

The exhibition also includes portraits of larger-than-life female musicians including Beth Ditto, and Hawkins’s long-term collaborator Paloma Faith, seen in an entirely unexpected guise.

This exhibition runs from Saturday 29th January to Saturday 30th April 2022.

 The gallery is open 10am – 5pm Tuesdays to Saturdays and entry is free.