Ori Gersht’s The Forest

MEDIA RELEASE for immediate release
26 June 2007

MIC Toi Rerehiko presents

Ori Gersht’s The Forest

Serene video installation with an ominous subtext takes residency at MIC Gallery

Ori Gersht’s celebrated photography explores the fragile limits of human civilisation with the NZ premiere of The Forest at MIC Toi Rerehiko from 24 August to 5 October 2007. This film installation evokes emotions frame by frame, narrating dark moments in history that will mesmerize its viewers.

Shot deep in the Moskolovka Forest in the Ukraine, The Forest echoes the violent history of this border territory contested by Ukranians, Poles, Russians and Germans. Ori Gersht records a series of graceful, processional pans across bands of individual trees. Gradually the eye notices a number of trees mysteriously falling, with the soundtrack amplifying the sound of each crash.

‘An elegy for the nameless dead lost in wartime atrocities in this region, the piece… enacts the kind of ceaseless vigil that will be needed if these crimes are not to be repeated. The Forest is a uniquely powerful work, unstinting and indelibly haunting, it combines a terrible sadness with a quiet yet formidable strength’. (Steven Bode, Tracks in the Forest, from the accompanying catalogue Ori Gersht The Clearing).

Gersht, born in Tel Aviv in 1967 and a graduate of London’s Royal Collage of Art in 1995, is no stranger to critical acclaim. His politically-charged message exposes a dark perspective on contemporary society. His work has been showcased at the Galerie Martin Kudlek in Cologne, Germany with the touring exhibition The Knowledge Factory organized by The British Council and the Photographer’s Gallery, and was the subject of a major solo exhibition in his native Israel at the Tel Aviv Museum of Art.

When previously shown in the Tate Gallery in London and the Guggenheim Museum in New York, it was observed that Ori Gersht’s art ‘…affords us a view, realizing our dream to be merely a fly-on-the-wall witness to an enormous event we could never access otherwise’. (Timothy Liu, Art Paper).

The Forest and related photographic exhibition The Clearing have drawn high profile international media attention. The Guardian’s “Culture” section dedicated three pages to The Clearing in December 2005. Roy Exley of Flash Art called the work ‘…part of the subtle infiltration of a neo-Romantic sensibility into that vacuum left by the disappearance and abjection of irony in the early 90’s’. Evening Standard critic Hephzibah Anderson saw the work as both “…historically and emotionally loaded.”

Ori Gersht’s video installation The Forest is at

MIC Toi Rerehiko Gallery
321 Karangahape Rd, City
Friday 24 August to Saturday 6 October 2007

Gallery Opening Hours:
Tue - Fri, 10am – 6pm
Sat, 11am - 4pm

ENDS

www.mic.org.nz

The Forest was commissioned by Film and Video Umbrella in association with The Photographers' Gallery, London, with support from Arts Council England. With additional thanks to CRG Gallery, New York, Angles Gallery, Los Angeles
and Noga Gallery, Tel Aviv.

MIC receives major funding from Creative NZ, ASB Community Trust, and Auckland City.

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