Join us to celebrate the first exhibitions of 2026 - we are delighted to launch launch Ammon Ngakuru: Telltale (a dog), Kalisolaite ‘Uhila: Koe Tenga tete to tete Utu pe koia and Avtar Singh.

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.

Kalisolaite ‘Uhila Koe Tenga tete to tete Utu pe koia (the seed you sow you will reap) is held at both Te Uru, Aotearoa, and at UNSW Galleries, Australia, ‘Uhila recapitulates 27 years of artistic practice, reflecting on gestures of hospitality, on family and togetherness/belonging, and on growth. Koe Tenga tete to tete Utu pe koia reflects on our links to the past, to collective histories and trauma. It considers how we grow through personal perseverance, unexpected opportunities, and new encounters.