“life sux then you die”
Toby Pola
20 Apr → 12 May 2012
Gallery 3

A worn out yellow and white cap with hot pink text that reads 'Choose Life'.
Toby Pola ‘life sux then you die’ 2012, Installation view: West Space, Bourke Street Mall, 2012. Photography by Christo Crocker

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’.

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Three sculptural pieces sit on a white plinth, two put out cigarretes, a cup of coffee, and the book lolita written by Vladimir Nabokov.

Toby Pola