All images courtesy of Apurva Gupta and Cool Change Gallery.

Exhibition description:

Hope for the Best, Prepare for the Worst (2021) utilises materials common to prepping culture to develop artworks which engage with individuated emergency preparedness. Day’s portable, waterproof, handstitched works derive from infographic ‘how to’ survival diagrams. These large-scale tarpaulin diagrams reflect the embedded desire within emergency preparation for order, while suggesting the highly individuated nature of such practices. Trail markers and ground-to-air support signals are clustered throughout the space, traditionally temporary markers, Day instead fixes these coded signs of optimism and disaster in aluminium. 20L plastic bucket lights illuminate a sleeping bag whose fluorescent interior acts as an emergency signal flag, the surface of which is gridded with handstitched S.A.S Survival Handbook iconography. Hope for the Best, Prepare for the Worst (2021) invites the viewer to consider the ways in which emergency preparedness may operate on an individual level, and what these modes of material practice may offer.