Te Uru Waitākere Contemporary Gallery: Ammon Ngakuru: Telltale (a dog)

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on his painting practice, Ammon Ngakuru creates a space of ambiguity, where clarity and selectivity are purposefully rescinded.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.