TARGET PRACTICE
2022
Solo show: performance, works on paper, video work (Bug Out, single channel video, 2022).
2 minute excerpt from ‘Bug Out’, 2 minute excerpt from ‘Target Practice’ performance, stills from ‘Bug Out’, install images by Sarah Walker, exhibition opening and performance images by Benjamin Hoffman.
Presented at Platform Arts, Geelong.
Sarah Walker needs a plan. The world is falling apart, and she's not going to go down with it. All she has to do is pack. And learn to light a fire. And push away everyone who loves her. Easy.
Target Practice explores future fear and apocalyptic anxieties through the framework of ‘prepper’ culture. The work uses humour and absurdity to think through what disaster looks like in an age of unprecedented atomisation and consumerism. Using archery (the preferred defence technique of survivalists) as a framework, Target Practice considers ideas around safety and chaos, and what it means to try to be a hunter, when really, you’re more likely to end up as prey.
In the style of vlogger culture, one woman prepares for the end times, filming herself all the while. A mess of handmade targets in a makeshift shooting range demonstrate the violence hiding in our language. Anything you can’t carry, you’ll have to leave. But what if you can’t carry yourself? Through video, works on paper and performance, Target Practice pokes at the wobbly edges of culture and the flimsiness of human security, and asks what is really needed when shit hits the fan.