Preppers is an exhibition about doomsday preppers — the global subculture of people who prepare for the collapse of society. Preppers collect specialised gear, practice survival skills, and hoard violent knowledge. They gather in communities and clubs as well as online. Prepping is a hobby but also a worldview, with its own distinct aesthetics, vocabulary, and consumer products.

This exhibition considers the prepper phenomenon as an expression of wider cultural anxieties. Today catastrophe looms on many fronts — whether environmental collapse, disruptive technology, rising political nativism, or another financial crash. While established power systems fail to address these great challenges, preppers are hard at work planning for the worst. In this moment of great uncertainty, they understand that chaos also represents an opportunity.

The Preppers exhibition is part of a series on this theme. The project began with presentations at galleries in Sydney, Melbourne, Perth, and Fremantle, and is now extended through touring with ART ON THE MOVE. It features five contemporary Australian and international artists producing sculpture, video, installation, and print art.

The art in this show draws on internet and consumer culture, as well as actual experience within prepping communities. It emphasises the aesthetics of rugged survival gear, high-performance materials, specialist technology and tools. In the hands of the artists involved, these tools take on new capacities to express the paranoia, ambivalence, absurdities and hope in an uncertain future. The artists involved are Tiyan Baker (NSW), Loren Kronemyer (USA/TAS), Guy Louden (WA), Dan McCabe (WA) and Thomas Yeomans (UK).

‘Preppers’ is an ART ON THE MOVE touring exhibition.

To see the Gallery Exhibition timetable please go to: https://www.katanning.wa.gov.au/services/sport-amp;-recreation/public-art-gallery.aspx