Toby Pola We Outnumber You

3 – 26 July 2014
You and me with the devil
Toby Pola

You and me with the devil

, 2014
Wood Carving and Acrylic Paint

Sutton Gallery is pleased to present We Outnumber You, a collection of wood carved sculptural mementos, imbued with a sense of nostalgia, black humour and craftsmanship.

We Outnumber You will exhibit a new series of work by Pola that extends his current practice dealing with Australian suburban vernacular into a more raw and degraded aesthetic, creating  pop sculptures that rather than appearing kitsch or glossy, seemed dinged, bruised and faded with time.

Pola will present his sculptural objects in the form of a collection of oversized ornaments and mementos. The sculptures will mirror the type of toys, bric-a-brac and junk collected by teenagers to decorate their bedrooms or the memorabilia collections typical of adults in a state of nostalgic arrested development. The perverted iconography explored will travel from a degraded leaky mickey mouse figurine to a burnt out plastic gorilla, a mutated siamese soft serve ice-cream and death metal incarnation of Jesus. Forms explored in the work will span from ambiguous idiosyncratic symbols personal to Pola to universal signs of retro trash culture.

Highlighting the craft of gestural carving into jelutong wood, the material of work will sit at odds against the cheap, artificial and lurid veneers usually associated with the caricatures on display.

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