If Gerard Hemsworth's paintings of adorable bunnies, mushrooms and cartoon figures in simple contours look a little too frivolous, especially for an artist of his stature, that's because they are.
'They are meant to be cute and silly,' the fine art professor of University of London's Goldsmiths College says of the works featured in his first Asia solo exhibition, After Urban Garden, at Moon Gallery.
'People find it difficult to cope with silliness. People are nervous about being silly. However, silliness does not equal stupidity. Something profound can be silly.'
The objects and characters featured in Hemsworth's works are described in the exhibition catalogue as a portrait of the 'Hemsworld', an innocent 'happy place' on the surface, filled with child-like images and characters, painted in two-dimensional fashion in matte colours.
Hemsworth says his paintings, though comprising simple, neat contours, are made up of foreground, middle ground and background. But, he says, such concepts of space might not translate to Asian viewers, who are used to seeing flat paintings, as the concept of perspective is not a convention of Asian art.
'You can read them as absolutely flat, or push them into perspective,' says the artist. 'It's interesting to show my works in Hong Kong.'
