but afterwards I was still you
Tom Polo

Tom Polo’s drawings and paintings are highly recognisable for their unique and tender personal style, as they often seek out the mysterious alchemy of image and text. For all its seeming casualness towards form and language, his practice reveals an acute observation of social encounters and personal histories. 

For this Banner Series Commission, Polo has emphasised the central role of writing and poetry in his practice. Each of the banners, imagined in high-key colours, frames a text that functions as a singular phrase. When read together these phrases join to form a distilled, almost literary, narrative: 

I thought I saw a way through
but afterwards I was still you 

Neither knowing nor naïve, the meaning is possibly optimistic or could just as easily be full of pathos, longing and fragility. The texts physically embody the sentiment they communicate—assertive, even bold, then eventually drifting away to a slightly deflated realisation.

Wall label