Seasons fall into a new cycle as a naked tree unfurls across the frame, bearing its fruit in the depths of winter. To its left, a young boy balances upon a yellow space hopper, itself a cartoon echo of the random fruit that carpets the lawn. His back to the world, he peers in through a window that greets him with closure.

Both his age and expression remain undetermined – narrative is left to the pulse of our own invention, guided by the wisdom of memory and imagination. In the darkness, individually lit windows pepper the spectacle, doubling up as a strip of processed film, each shaped by its own drama. Whispers ricochet through the quiet, inviting a thousand stories. Annabel Elgar’s photographs are constellations of pregnant details that chart out broken narratives. Figures unfold to divorced roles in the same space, where gazes by-pass each other as well as the viewer. Backs often turned, time often internalised, the characters offer us a fragile recoil from where they find themselves. The pictorial space is spun together through the meticulous spread of deep shadow and rich colour, where illumination is paired down and rationed, defeating any swift identification. The time taken to knit this tapestry of association is significant. Images emerge slowly, out of pace and kilter with the initial frame. The experience of looking is punctuated by moments of recognition: the fumblings of a preoccupied couple, a half concealed face, a scab on a knee, a rotten apple. Darkness takes centre stage, shedding light on the forbidden and the prohibited. Elgar’s work maps out the eclipse of personal mythology and felt experience of individual memory and identification. Logical attempts to pin together narratives falter, consumed by a bed of signs that has its own imagination, its own cinema.