Going down the rabbit hole is fun

Bridgetown’s Rabbit Hole has opened a 2D Insta-booth, giving visitors the opportunity to photograph themselves inside a 2D world and bringing a touch of South Korea to the South West.

The booth is a collaboration between Rabbit Hole owner Jenny Mountford, Trudy Clothier and artist Emily Smith and is built inside a shipping container that is attached to the rear of the Rabbit Hole.

Ms Mountford said they had wanted to find a use for the shipping container.

“Trudy saw a video of a cafe that’s done it like that in Korea and so we decided that would be totally perfect for Bridgetown,” she said.

“We thought we could reproduce something like that as a photo booth, rather than a cafe, we thought that would work in the setting of a container.

“The main thing was that we had an artist here who was capable of doing it, because obviously she and I aren’t artists, but Emily Smith who is one of the resident artists at the Rabbit Hole is a comic book artist by profession, so it was kismet.”

The shipping container is decorated with Ms Smith’s artwork, painted on to corflute and affixed to the walls of the container, as well as the internal walls erected within the container.

“It turned out to be a little bit tricky because we discovered there are a lot of paints that won’t actually adhere to corflute, so we had to then find a primer that would stick to corflute and then we had to prime everything,” Ms Mountford said.

“In the end we made it work and that meant that once the primer was on, Emily could use an acrylic paint for the work in there, which was much easier than any other of the paints.”

Ms Smith was assisted by fellow Rabbit Hole artists Kylie and Lilly Hinchey in putting the finishing touches on the booth.

Ms Mountford said as far as she knew, the project was an Australian first.

“We haven’t found any in Australia, as far as we know there are certainly none in WA, we’ve kind of Googled as much as we can,” she said. “I don’t think we can say it categorically, but it certainly would be very unusual for here.”