Tom Polo works across painting and installation, creating material forms that capture exchanges between people. His practice draws from a rich accumulation of social encounters, keen observations, and personal histories, recording the emotional and performative relationships between the self and others within social, theatrical, and psychological spaces. Through a blend of abstraction, text, and figuration, Polo explores how conversation and gesture become embodied acts of portraiture, simultaneously masking and revealing the complexities of our inner worlds.

Tom Polo has exhibited work at Art Gallery of New South Wales; Art Gallery of South Australia; and Museum of Contemporary Art Australia (MCA), all in Australia, among others.