Summary

About the Artwork

"Dancers wear masks to protect them from the spiritual world. It is a disguise hiding their true identity when performing rituals. Dancers also are endowed with the character and spirit of a certain mask, which have been invoked into the mask with magic, thus only certain persons can wear them and perform the intended rituals."

Artist Biography
Tommy is of the Samsep tribe of Erub (Darnley Island) from the Eastern Torres Strait Islands, and has Australian Aboriginal, Papua New Guinean, Pacific Islander and Asian heritage. He was born in Townsville, North Queensland, and lived there as an infant before relocating to Brisbane, Waiben (Thursday Island) and Cairns.

Pau considers himself an artist who is Indigenous, not as an Indigenous artist. His wide-ranging professional practice includes sculpture, carving, printmaking, installation, digital media and multimedia, and anything that grabs his interest. He also writes poetry.

Tommy has participated in numerous exhibitions and his works are represented in numerous major public and private collections in Australia. In 2016 he won the National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art Award (NATSIAA) for Works on Paper. In 2022 he received a Cairns Art Gallery Fellowship Award, sponsored by the Cairns RSL Club. The resulting exhibition from this Fellowship Award is entitled Ilan Oman by Tommy Pau, which is currently on display at Cairns Regional Gallery (25 May – 4 August 2024).