For Recent Interview + Review see 'website links' below...
Interview- http://www.finerestaurantsandvillas.com/?p=1643
Review - http://www.baliadvertiser.biz/articles/artwords/2011/june_15.html

an australian expat artist based in Bali.
fine arts trained...worked mainly as a display artist, silkscreener, textile print designer, fashion designer+retailer.

Represented by-
Gregg Shienbaum Gallery ,Miami,Usa.
Alain Daudet Galerie,Toulouse,France.
Art Haus Gallery, jl.Drupardi,Seminyak,Bali.
Claremont Framers Gallery,Perth,West.Australia.

" i like to think of pop art as a living, evolving
entity, not as a dead chapter in the timeline of (western) art history. i love the way media juxtapose images of vapid reality show celebrities, genocidal despots, dubious corporatemen and politicians along with business branding and the detritus of the suburban dream such as serial killers, sex scandals and lottery winners next to ads for silicone breast implants, penis enhancements, toilet paper and breakfast cereals...its all grist for the pop mill, and like any good tabloid, there can never be enough cheese for thought!?

i'm fascinated by the constant bombardment of images and information in life and liken it to all the spacejunk floating around our planet like so much cosmic debris..i love the way all our broadcasts, communications, signals, radio and television from over the decades, are all stretching out forever into deep space. Like some eternal record of mankind and all his/her foibles and achievements and madness..also its like the ultimate epitaph, as quite possibly by the time any signals are recieved, we may be long expired as a species...but our galactic tsunami of information will continue on as some mega cosmic mash up of TV soapies and ads, radio jingles, the Simpsons, the speeches of JFK-Mao-Hitler-Stalin, the Marx bros, pop songs, Lady Gaga, Martin Luther King, Nelson Mandela, opera, religious hymns, world music, and..well, you get the picture..i'm just delighted that "Yummy,yummy,yummy,ive got love in my Tummy" or "Shake,Shake,Shake,Shake your Booty" - might be in the final mash-up that aliens or other life forms get to hear??..that should blow their expanded minds!?

i've always been intrigued by urban decay, urban fallout, suburban surrealism...the leftovers of our lives, the remains of where we've been, the "stuff" we accumulate-cling to-and abandon, the crumbling ruins of a house, the burnt out car, the desolate gutted factory, rubbish dumps..the wastelands of our society where the layers of occupancy have been stripped back and revealed, as has the transient nature of our brief lives, like a mini-archeological dig in suburbia..all peeled paint, rusting metal,abandoned dreams, and faded memories. .. yesterdays news and old tabloid headlines and magazines also draw me in.

consumerism appears in my work a lot..when i was involved in the fashion game i realised the incredible waste of resources, and the folly of this eternal appetite for the latest 'thing'...the mercurial and illusory promise of happiness attached to each item, be it a dress, a car, a handphone, another house renovation etc..i was just helping to feed peoples hollow desires on this neverending treadmill of seasons, hype and fads..as they shopped like circling sharks, always moving, feeding, purchasing, all about the me...its a kind of illness i think, people needing to fill their empty lives in the western world..it seems to 'top up' the spritually devoid..this need to shop.,

its the layers that fascinate me...and natural design...is breathtakingly stunning...the way the design of the cosmos can be seen repeated in the microsopic detail of cells and viruses etc..the design of insects and the small world compared to say that of dinosaurs ...plants and birds etc, it is simply amazing. yet we not only take it all for granted, we actively destroy it..nature is the real treasure, heaven,and paradise we are all looking for..blinded by fools gold.? as the famous american indian quote goes-"when weve eaten all the fish,poisoned the rivers and cut down all the trees,what then?-do we eat money?"

my paintings are happily collecting dust on clients walls
in australia,new zealand, indonesia, singapore, hk,china, macau,spain, france, belgium, italy, switzerland, netherlands, germany, austria,japan, brazil, and usa.
i'm always seeking to exhibit outside of Bali..if anyone is interested please contact me.
bretpolok@yahoo.com.au

bret polok.
(artist, sometime writer, fearless procrastinator, & loyal loungebar existentialist?..)

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