STATION, Sydney

Tom Polo, Michael Staniak, Marian Tubbs

STATION, Melbourne is proud to announce the opening of a temporary Sydney project space with an exhibition of new works by Tom Polo, Michael Staniak and Marian Tubbs. This curated selection showcases a trio of the gallery’s artists who work with new surface materialities, exploring the realm of abstract mark-making from diverse perspectives.

Tom Polo’s paintings, wall installations and sculptures stem from an interest in how conversation, doubt and gesture can be considered inherent acts of self-portraiture. Polo is a keen observer of social interactions and events, depicting the nuances of anxiety, surveillance and humour in his particular brand of abstracted  guration. His  gures appear in states of mental or physical transit, accompanied by painterly impressions of a central character’s moment of rupture, release or reverie. Colour plays an integral role in Polo’s pratice, where it is deployed for it’s conceptual weight or as an associative backdrop to interior narratives.

Michael Staniak’s paintings are exercises in process, constructed with a casting compound that he sprays with coruscating pigments. He creates subtle gradients across the picture plane that produce scintillating illusory e ects, oscillating between the sensation of a  at screen-mediated image and the rich texture of an analog painting.  e gestures  owing across the cast surface are made gradually over time: a collective of corporeal impressions and incidental modelling. His works present as contemporary trompe l’oeils: ba ing the senses, but satisfying the eye with each viewing.

Permanence and disposability, and the logic of assembling artworks from the detruitus from objects and things sits at the core of Marian Tubb’s practice. Tubbs’ practice is cross-displanary, exploring these concepts through prints, video and assemblage-based installations. Her art con ates material binaries between body and object, physical and virtual and high and low culture. Tubbs’ assemblage-based installations and digital works critique cultural ascriptions of value and act as a means to slow down accelerated modes of looking

Image: Michael Staniak, ‘HDF_30’, 2018, casting compound and acrylic on board, steel frame, 181.2 x 136.2 cm

AT THIS GALLERY

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