Polly Staple is an independent curator and writer as well as Editor-a-Large of the contemporary arts journal frieze. Staple was formerly Director of Frieze Projects, the curatorial programme realized annually at Frieze Art Fair, London where she produced commissions with artists including Pawel Althamer, Manon de Boer, Jeremy Deller, Liam Gillick, Aleksandra Mir, Paola Pivi, Roman Ondak, Martha Rosler, Lawrence Weiner, Cathy Wilkes and Andrea Zittel alongside "The Artists Cinema" in association with LUX, and a talks programme including presentations from cultural figures such as Marina Abramovic, Thomas Crow, Zaha Hadid, Jacques Rancière and Saskia Sassen.
Staple was previously Curator at Cubitt Gallery, London and co-Editor of Untitled magazine. She is a tutor on the MA Fine Art at Chelsea College of Art & Design and has been a regular visiting tutor at the Royal College of Art and Goldsmiths College, and contributor to a range of publications including frieze, Art Monthly and Afterall writing criticism and essays on artists, including - Micol Assaël, Johanna Billing, Gillian Carnegie, Hilary Lloyd and Joanne Tatham & Tom O'Sullivan, She is the commissioning editor and producer of the bi-annual publication Living & Loving by Aleksandra Mir. A former member of the Arts Council Collection Acquisitions & Advisory Committee, Staple is currently chair of the board of trustees of Studio Voltaire, London and The Elephant Trust.
More recently, Staple co-curated You Have Not Been Honest, a major British Council produced, touring survey show of contemporary film and video from the UK. Including works by Phil Collins, Ryan Gander, Rosalind Nashashibi and Lucy Skaer, The Otolith Group and Margaret Salmon, and which opened at MADRE, Naples (2007). Staple is currently developing a "Switzerland: Art, Commerce and the Desiring Subject", as a research project to be realized as a group essay-show and publication in 2008/09.