This is the latest in a series of much anticipated commissions for promising young New Zealand artists on this site, which since 2011 has provided a public platform for new practice in Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland. 

Opening 27 September, Three Scenes 2025 transforms the outdoor terrace into an open-air stage. It features four intertwined sculptural objects: a pair of curtains, a miniature replica of the old flour store at Ngāruawāhia, a floral arrangement cast in resin, and an enlarged stone carving of a Dove soap bar supporting three bronze flies. Visitors encounter the work as a series of scenes, observed from Albert Park or moving through the space itself. 

Based in Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland, Ammon Ngakuru was recently included in the Gallery’s Aotearoa Contemporary exhibition. “The opportunity to respond to the North Terrace at the Gallery and have the support to work at a larger scale has allowed me to engage in a considered way, extending ideas and materials that have been crucial to my practice,” says Ngakuru. 

Senior Curator of Global Contemporary Art, Natasha Conland says the installation is a unique opportunity to see Ngakuru engage fully in sculpture, in a manner that is both highly material, lyrical and powerful. “It is at once oblique and overt, delicate and potent, with meanings that appear to softly lure the audience into an entirely new perspective and spectatorial space.” 

Conland says that in bringing together personal memory and cultural references, Ngakuru’s work resists fixed interpretation and invites reflection on how we engage with our surroundings. “The artist reimagines the flour store as a functioning bird feeder. The building it references is both a site from the artist’s childhood neighbourhood and a monument to industrial change in the Waikato, where Māori-owned mills were displaced by larger Pākehā-run operations in the late 19th century.” 

The commission is supported by the Chartwell Trust and the Contemporary Benefactors of Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki. 

Ammon Ngakuru: Three Scenes 2025 
27 September 2025—18 October 2026 
Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki

About the artist 

Ammon Ngakuru (b.1993) lives and works in Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland. He holds a Bachelor of Visual Art from Auckland University of Technology and a Master of Fine Art from Elam School of Fine Arts, University of Auckland. 

Ngakuru’s artistic practice is concerned with the way that history, categorisation and value operate within the ‘post’-colonial context. His recent exhibitions include: May Art Fair solo exhibition, Coastal Signs (2025); Aotearoa Contemporary, Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki (2024); Winter Skies, Coastal Signs, Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland (2023); The long waves of our ocean, National Library of New Zealand, Te Whanganui-a-tara Wellington (2022); Misere, Coastal Signs, Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland (2021); Pumice, Coastal Signs, Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland (2021); Cutouts, Enjoy, Pōneke Wellington (2020); Uncomfortable Silence, Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhetū, Ōtautahi Christchurch (2020).