A radio dial tunes to BBC News, searching for the familiar, unbroken voices channelling the airwaves to deliver the latest news. In Still Weather however, the dial rewires and diverts, finding instead a language of weather and nature. A bird is calling out, a low thunder rumbles, wind gently whispers through the airwaves. The signal refracts as though through a prism, splitting into a chorus of sound and its component colours. Everything in Still Weather is a variation of that same principle.

The full spectrum of colour disperses across the exhibition’s paintings. But the colour is filtered, run through silt, as if clarity itself had become a kind of dishonesty. Koak began thinking towards this exhibition in the strange interval after the last U.S. election in November 2024. A stomach-drop of realising what is ahead, a slow release of dread. It is a peculiarly modern condition of living inside a future you already anticipate, with no choice but to wait for its arrival.

That expectation…