For his first major institutional solo exhibition, in a part of your mind, I am you, Tom Polo turns Ngununggula into a stage for shifting identities, elusive gestures, and half-finished conversations.

Across the exhibit's five acts, the celebrated Australian artist invites us to consider how we perform, conceal, and connect. Polo’s signature style – a vivid, gestural language forged over 15 years – is splayed across large-scale panels, subtle works on paper, and new pieces shaped during his New York residency. The result is a body of work at once intimate and operatic, humorous and haunting. Referencing Italian theatre and imbued with a carefully choreographed lighting score, the exhibition places us, the viewers, at its emotional core.

But before the curtain rises later this week (the exhibition will run from 28 June – 24 August 2025), we sat down with Polo to speak about portraiture, play, and the fragile act of being seen – and unseen – in public.

The exhibition is called in a part of your mind, I am you. Where did you draw inspiration for the title?

I’m interested in concepts that overlap or loop back on themselves – things that feel cyclical. These can be physical gestures or emotional states, but the common denominator is a sense of familiarity. The phrase in a part of your mind, I am you is one I’ve returned to repeatedly in my practice — as artwork titles, written text within paintings, and as a kind of thematic anchor — so it felt natural that the first survey of my work would carry that sentiment forward. The title suggests a blurring: between me and you, inside and outside, the stage and the audience, of fiction and reality.

You’ve set up the exhibition like a five-act play. What inspired that idea?

The exhibition isn’t a play in a literal sense, but the idea of a five-act structure helped shape the sequencing and pacing of the experience — guiding how audiences move through the space and unpack ideas. Ngununggula is made up of four gallery spaces, and that physical layout offered a natural foundation for thinking about structure and progression. It felt appropriate to frame the exhibition in this way, with each room operating as a kind of scene or chapter.

I’m always thinking about how things are staged and framed, and how narrative can unfold through space. The structure allows for shifts in mood and scale, with each room offering distinct — or overlapping — emotional or psychological registers. My interest in caricature and archetypes, particularly through the lens of La Commedia dell’arte, informed this approach. Each act becomes a situation or encounter, echoing ideas of performativity, repetition and the dynamic between looking and being watched.

You’ve made a big new multi-panel work for the show. Can you tell us about it?

stage sequence (in a part of your mind, i am you) is a six-metre-long painting that unfolds across the canvas like a shifting performance. Using oil stick and thin veils of paint, the protagonist moves through a series of charged gestures — stretching, reaching, shapeshifting — appearing to mutate in this stage-like setting. The work explores transformation, repetition and the emotional tension of performance while engaging with broader themes of interpersonal exchange, and the play between presence and absence that runs throughout the exhibition. Sitting within the fourth room of Ngununggula, it suggests both the final moment and an open-ended question to in a part of your mind, i am you.

You’ve included works by other artists like Tracey Emin and Urs Fischer in the exhibition. Why did you want their pieces in the show?

It was early on in our planning that the exhibition’s curators Megan Monte and Milena Stojanovska suggested a framework of other artists for in a part of your mind, I am you. On loan from the Art Gallery of New South Wales collection, works by Tracey Emin, Urs Fischer and Ugo Rondinone felt like a natural extension of the ideas I’m exploring. Their practices touch on similar themes — light, reflection, time, and emotional terrain — but approach them in ways that are materially and emotionally distinct. I was interested in the kind of conversation that could emerge when these works sit alongside mine — how they might echo, complicate or extend certain ideas, and offer different ways of thinking about presence, gesture, and the spaces we occupy.

You’re revisiting and reworking some older pieces in this show. What was it like to look back on your earlier work?

Revisiting earlier works was a chance to see how certain themes and visual languages have quietly persisted over the last decade whilst also diversifying — ideas around gesture, presence and the slippage between public and private selves. It’s been nice to see how these things continue to underpin and shape new work, even as the forms evolve — something about that feels honest and reassuring about what’s to come.

What do you hope people feel or think about after walking through the exhibition?

For audiences, I hope there’s a sense of recognition, of being met in some emotional or psychological way - even if it's looking at these strange faces and wondering who it is staring back. That these narratives - whilst open are at the same time quite personal to me - are understood and relatable. That there is playfulness in vulnerability; clarity and confusion, doubt and uncertainty. I hope people feel the complexity of that – that slippage between the internal and external, and the strange, sometimes tender space that exists between looking and being seen.

Feature image: Tom Polo: in a part of your mind, i am you, installation view, Ngununggula, 2025. Photo by Jessica Maurer.