In this exhibition, the first that focuses exclusively on his painting practice, Ammon Ngakuru creates a space of ambiguity, where clarity and selectivity are purposefully rescinded. The viewer is invited into a constellation of settings that place them at the threshold between a space of safety – the nest – and the ever-present emblems and fragments of distress and anxiety, which are looming on the periphery. It is intentionally left open, if the state of emergency, which creeps into the safe and relaxed setting of the inner space is due to a light-hearted affinity for crime shows, or a more sinister link to actual and abstract threats or fears. This dynamic tension echoes the artist’s broader interest in how personal and social narratives overlap, blur, and occasionally contradict, but also amplify one another.

With the decision to focus on painting for Telltale (a dog), Ngakuru challenges his own practice and artistic conventions. Beginning, again, at the very start: how do you get to an image? In a painting process that is intuitive and responsive to emerging forms, shapes and colour themes, the artist remains always perceptible and open to change. The narrative of the newly created works, rests in the space in-between that can be defined by is indefinability and contradictions: interiors and exteriors, intimate and personal memories and feelings with outside observations, hidden clues and clear symbols, signs of comfort next to markers of danger populate this new series. Recurring motifs appear and dissolve, suggesting shifting states of attention and, maybe, the instability of meaning (and its production) itself. With Telltale (a dog), Ngakuru purposefully works against an easy readability, inviting viewers to inhabit the uncertainty rather than resolve it. To feel rather than understand.

Image Credit | Ammon Ngakuru (Society Limonta, 2025, detail)