KIND POCKETS

Richard Hart - creative force behind Durban based design studio exhibits in Cape Town.

Each year during the month of February, Cape Town hosts Design Indaba - the internationally acclaimed design conference and expo. Running concurrently with the Indaba, Whatiftheworld is hosting a debut solo exhibition by Richard Hart from Disturbance - the award-winning Durban-based design agency that was recently featured on the cover of the international design journal, I.D Magazine.

Kind Pockets is an exploration of the concept of the marsupial girl, an imaginary archetype. Aesthetically, the work references the visual vernacular of popular youth culture, bringing to mind the work of artists such as Rita Ackermann, Aya Takano and Yoshitomo Nara. At surface level the work seems to deal with the ephemeral – themes such as beauty, fashion, innocence and adolescence. But on closer inspection the girls and their animal companions populate a disquieting world where the fragile present threatens to shatter into something more sinister. The images seem to capture the moment just before the event, and are filled with an unnerving anticipation. The inhabitants occupy an ambiguous space, heightening the overall sense of disquiet – the dialogue between girl and animal often seems to be an uneasyone.

The works also allude to fertility; perhaps more a metaphysical fertility than a literal one. Whether it be the swan emerging from the folds of the girl’s dress in Youth god, Thunder god and the War of Teenage Dreams or the embracing monkeys in the pinafore pocket of one twin in Sometimes a Perfect Violence, there is a repeated motif of an animal emerging from the womb area of the subject. Between these symbolic potentials of birth and becoming, the exquisite detail of the clothing and the otherworldly beauty of the young girls, an underlying current of latent sexuality comes through in many of the works and adds to the sense of tension.

Kind Pockets opens on February 25 at 18h30 and runs until March 21.

Also opening during this period is a design exhibition titled Presies curated by Dirk de Waal and hosted by the WITW / Design Studio showroom on Hope Street. This will be the first in a series of design projects and exhibitions by guest curators at the showroom taking place throughout 2009.

The gallery is situated on the First Floor, 208 Albert Road, Woodstock, Cape Town. Phone 021 448 1438 or 084 414 4554 or email: info@whatiftheworld.com or visit www.whatiftheworld.com