“life sux then you die”
Toby Pola
20 Apr → 12 May 2012

Toby Pola channels the folk art of the whittler. His painted balsa wood figurative carvings evoke the charm of the forgotten craftsman by updating tradition through the use of contemporary subject matter and humour. This exhibition features a new body of work: figures in states of near injury and the resulting busted limbs. Some works represent life-size broken limbs in plaster casts, decorated with graffiti and other scribblings. Some are painted in fluoro colours, mimicking the new method of resin casting that is used in treating fractures today. Accompanying the broken limb sculptures are small figures in various states of potential harm and fringe dwelling abject teenagers, playing the ‘before’ to the cast sculptures ‘after’.