Ori Gersht’s solo show This Storm is What We Call Progress opens at the Imperial War Museum London today

Still from Will You Dance For Me by Ori Gersht

I’m super happy today to report that Ori Gersht’s first solo museum show This Storm is What We Call Progress opens to the public today at the Imperial War Museum in London. I’ve yet to see the show but there’s no excuse to miss it as it runs until the end of April. See below for videos from the lovely Ori (I know him as both a friend and as a visual artist) talking in his inimitable fashion about his work.

There are also two boxed book sets available at £40 and £250, see below for details. I am just about to reserve one for myself  – the £40 one I hasten to add. Take a look at the videos below, read over for more about the show from the press release and head over to the museum. Then buy the box set – you won’t be disappointed. And, with a design by SMITH, the entire package looks like it has been both beautifully and sensitively produced.

Ori Gersht: This Storm is What We Call Progress from Photoworks on Vimeo

Artist Book: Ori Gersht from Photoworks on Vimeo

Ori Gersht: This Storm is What We Call Progress 

Imperial War Museum, London

25 January – 29 April 2012

A significant new exhibition of work by the Israeli-born, London-based artist Ori Gersht shows in partnership with Photoworks at the Imperial War Museum, London.

Co-curated by Photoworks Head of Programme, Celia Davies, This Storm is What We Call Progress is Gersht’s first major solo show in the UK and presents new photographs alongside two recent filmworks each reflecting personal experiences shaped by the Second World War.

Gersht’s work often deals with conflict, history and geographical place. The works in this show each disguise dark and complex themes beneath seductive, beautiful imagery.

Will You Dance For Me a new filmwork developed in association with Photoworks, depicts an 85-year-old dancer rocking back and forth in a chair, slowly recounting her experiences as a young woman in Auschwitz. Her punishment for refusing to dance at an SS officer’s party was to stand barefoot in the snow, and she pledged that if she survived she would dedicate her life to dance.

The two-screen film Evaders explores the mountainous path of the Lister Route, used by many to escape Nazi-occupied France. The film focuses on the ill-fated journey of Jewish writer and philosopher Walter Benjamin, whose own words give the exhibition its title. This presentation of Evaders will be the film’s first UK showing.

The photographic work Chasing Good Fortune examines the shifting symbolism of Japanese cherry blossoms which came to be linked with Kamikaze soldiers during the Second World War.

Artist Book: Ori Gersht,  (£40) a boxed set of three hardback volumes and a softback text by Robert Rowland Smith, has been published by Photoworks to accompany this exhibition. Also available as a Limited Edition collector’s  set (£250) – a run of 150 specially boxed and signed with two signed and numbered prints.

Ori Gersht is represented by Mummery + Schnelle