Blue Oyster Gallery - The Grad Show

Well, how do I respond to this without sounding completely ignorant... Please forgive the uneducated!!!
It was friday afternoon, Feb 22. I took myself on a wee art-trip. First stop - Dunedin Public Art Gallery. Fell in love with the work of Elizabeth Thomson and Sigmar Polke... Second stop - Blue Oyster Gallery.... It was a warm afternoon, but as soon as I stepped into the gallery and straight into the installation, I felt oddly cold and ill-at-ease. Cardboard boxes, that looked to me as either the shelters of homeless people, or the aftermath of war. Inside the shelters were TV screens playing pictures of fires burning...on the wall, a projected film of just the upper face of what looked to me like middle-eastern woman. I guess this could confirm my initial recognition of the set up to represent ravages of war???? though, I am not sure. The noise was loud and discomforting that I was urged to move through to the next section of the gallery. Perhaps I should have studied the TV screens and projected images for longer (to try to work out the message), but the atmosphere drove me on. I am therefore not a hundred percent sure of the meaning of this installation, however can be sure that it had a strong emotional impact. I have a suspicion that this was the intended outcome.
Thinking I had made it to safety in the next section of the gallery, I came upon 3 TV monitors all showing women, in varying levels of distress. I donned the headphones of one - a teenage girl was recounting a misunderstanding and fall out with a friend. She was in tears and pretty distressed looking. My uncomfortable feeling was not leaving me!!! I looked at the next monitor and read the subtitles for some time. A woman, from middle east?, looking less disturbed than the first, was telling the story of her gang-rape. I was amazed and saddened at how she spoke so calmly, like the event itself had stolen all zest from her spirit... her story totally trivialised that of the distressed teen... I was now feeling less uncomfortable and more ill... I was the only one there and the low ceiling and dim lighting was making me feel increasingly claustrophobic. I quickly left via the lower gallery and unfortunately had only a cursory glance at the exhibition of work therein... I just needed to get out.
So, was the Grad Show a success? Well, if the intent was to move people to the edge (and beyond) of their comfort, to shock and to disturb one's sense of scale of misfortune and hardship... then it was most definitely. Did I enjoy the experience? Sorry, but no, not in the slightest. I felt like a small child who thinks s/he has woken in the night and is making their way down the hall to the bathroom, only to find they have woken into a nightmare!!!
I think I would like to revisit with a tour-guide to explain it a little more to me....