Inside and Outside the “Dark Forest”

Gurmon Sup (translated into English as “Dark Forest“) was an extraordinary installation at Te Uru Gallery in Titrangi by Jae Kang, an Auckland-based Korean artist and passionate  tomato grower.  She used recycled irrigation materials to create sinuous snakes and coils, piles of black polyethylene tubes, pipes and fixings invading rooms, hanging down the handsome golden spiral staircase of the old Lopdell House from the fifth floor, as though they were taking over the gallery.

Walking through, around, under or above this work evoked visions of the service ducts we ignore in all our buildings, perhaps coming alive and breaking out, and of the irrigation structures above and below the land, perhaps allowing poisons to seep through into the soil and underground aquifers.

And the  spiral staircase (which brings back memories of the old Lopdell House with its history as hotel, school for the deaf, teacher education centre) added one more dimension of human constructs being turned inside out.