Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery is delighted to announce representation of Tom Polo, and pleased to present his first solo exhibition ‘I still thought you were looking’ with the gallery.
Tom Polo uses painting and painted environments to explore how conversation, doubt and gesture are embodied acts of portraiture. Frequently incorporating text and figurative elements, his works draw upon acute observations, absurdist encounters, personal histories and imagined personas. An ongoing interest across his practice is the emotional and performative relationships between people within social, theatrical and psychological space.
In ‘I still thought you were looking’, Tom Polo explores the emotional and performative relationships between people within social, theatrical and psychological spaces.
These ‘performing’ figures – manoeuvring or looking elsewhere – largely mirror the scale of the viewer, whilst the positioning of each painting encourages the audience to choreograph their own immersive experience within the gallery and the space of each stage.
These encounters blur the line between the act of looking and being looked at; who is ‘actor’ and who is ‘audience’; the nuances of what is hidden and ultimately, what is revealed.