Tom Polo

Parramatta Heritage Centre
A joint project between Parramatta Heritage Centre and Parramatta Artists Studios
The Process Line | 8 June – 22 July 2007

Tom Polo’s recent work identifies the site of the bedroom as a stage for our diurnal dreams and a grotto for the nocturnal ones. The bedroom is the universal church; the pre-eminent public and private space of adult-children who stay at home. Many artists’ use their bedrooms as a surrogate studio space and hence the conceptualisation of it as a shrine acknowledges the importance of the process of ornamentation – of the posters, stickers and pattern of a typical suburban bedroom. These portraits quote directly from Tom’s Italian immigrant cultural milieu but reflect notions of iconography and fetishism of image rather than a deep and profound religious identity.