Ryan Pola - Full Bloom

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Full Bloom is a collection of drawings by Ryan Pola. This show examines such themes as rebirth and transition, with heavy influences of mythology and nature.

Opening reception: Dec 4th, 6 - 9pm.

This exhibition will run from December 5th - December 24th and will coincide with Scott Listfield's show Suns and Moons, Jesús Aguado's The Joker God & Kim Evans' show Mother Tongue.

The majority of the pieces double as a personification or representation of mythologies, in particular, Greek mythology. Grecian tales have fascinated Pola since he was a child. The people depicted in the drawings are used as a reflection of our own humanity.

Often the flora present in the drawings is in some process of consuming the figure. Whether this is a symbiotic or parasitic relationship is inconsequential: Pola is exploring a process of being at peace with something much larger than himself as an individual.

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Full Bloom is a collection of drawings by Ryan Pola. This show examines such themes as rebirth and transition, with heavy influences of mythology and nature.

Opening reception: Dec 4th, 6 - 9pm.

This exhibition will run from December 5th - December 24th and will coincide with Scott Listfield's show Suns and Moons, Jesús Aguado's The Joker God & Kim Evans' show Mother Tongue.

Pola has begun to really consider time and space in his works, as well as our connection to one another and nature. Works like “Afloat Styx” and “Liminal” draw on the notion of passing between one life and the next. The river Styx was the passage through which souls traversed into the afterlife. “Afloat Styx” is calm and still while exploring ideas that are tumultuous and ever changing. “Liminal” explores both cyclical decay and rebirth and the idea that we eventually return to that from which we came. It is an embrace of transitory being.

This series was created as a response to Pola’s infatuation with and appreciation of the coming of spring. He wanted the works to be bursting and hungry, and many of the florals included in the works were captured from what was blooming in his garden or heavily focused on appreciating Australian native flora.

Butterflies are a common theme in many of the works. By nature these creatures transform from something else, through a process of chrysalis, and the enveloping of the figures in flowers is symbolic of that.

Ryan Pola, from Melbourne, focuses mostly on portraiture. Ever a student of the human condition and how we consider ideas of what is desirable and ideal, he enjoys exploring how we present ourselves to the world and what we believe about how our own identities have been constructed.

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