High fantasy, low expectations marks Bruno Booth’s debut exhibition at Sweet Pea. The body of work stitches together the escapism of fantasy aesthetics with the harsh reality-check of life in late-capitalism. Across painting, sculpture, and video, Bruno’s project surveys the grim economic landscape of metropolitan Boorloo and the regional north of Western Australia. Bit by bit, these creative artefacts parody fantastical ideations of mundane pursuits for basic economic survival, in a manner that is constructive and sarcastic. A use of pop culture motifs to navigate nuanced social relations and ideas of economic disability has been a driving force between Bruno’s recent practice. Here, we see their latest artistic effort extend to regional communities and industrial worksites, exploring what's at the forefront of the WA working class’ anxieties. In a tongue-in-cheek fashion, the show reveals the dual absurdity and legitimacy of modern day proletariat coping mechanisms that are used to add a bit of glamour to increasingly difficult late-capitalist quests (such as home ownership, a living wage and access to education). Referencing video-game tropes, speculative fiction aesthetics, generative systems of human/machine collaboration, and even medieval swords found at the bottom of the sea, High fantasy, low expectations indexes the fairy-tale-meets-pipe-dream nature of economic survival in exceedingly dire circumstances. Bruno Booth has used a wheelchair for most of his life, interrupted by a short and unsuccessful career as an amateur stilt walker when he used prosthetic legs as a child. In his memory these leather and metal devices would not have been out of place on the set of some dystopian, apocalyptic epic – not in a cool and attractive Fury Road sort of way, more like the zombies in the original Walking Dead. The experience of wearing restrictive equipment left him with a dislike of tight-fitting clothing, a love of speed and a need to reach over his head in supermarkets – as a child he made the decision to use a wheelchair as his primary mode of transport – and he’s never looked back (probably because he’s too busy looking out for sand pits on dark footpaths). Having a disability has been a constant background hum throughout Booth’s life. Kind of like a social tinnitus – you know it’s there, but you try not to talk about it. It was only when he started to call himself an artist, without cringing too much, that he began to engage critically with what it meant to be categorised as disabled.