Biography
Michael Cook employs the camera as the supreme intermediary device – the ‘third
eye’ which can bridge European and Indigenous worlds and perspectives. The
photograph is, for Cook, that imaginary place of possibility where we can be invited
to experience the other side of the coin, roles in reversal, worlds inverted, histories
re-written. What would it be like to take your part? To walk in your shoes? To see
through your eyes? There is a playful innocence and palpable joy in Cook’s
speculations and specularisations (ego projections) evocative of dressing up,
make-believe, and telling tales. Images are elaborately crafted with sumptuous
detail and a seductive power to transport.
Cook’s fantastic works, where past, present and future collide, are home to both
vast chasms of disparity and intense points of connection. The images promise
imaginative pathways through minefields of associations, as we sense potential
unravellings of historical consequence. Enticed into fictional scenarios, viewers are
free to make their own inquiries, explore feelings, and test their relationship to
aspects of Australia’s colonial history. While always knowing he is Aboriginal but
perhaps never feeling Aboriginal, Cook has made artworks that are complex and
entangled, often provocative and sometimes preposterous, but always driven by
empathy and openness.
Michael Cook was adopted at birth into a non-Indigenous family. While cut off
from the connection to his biological and social Aboriginal heritage, he was
fortunate enough to have an adoptive mother who embraced his Aboriginality and
empowered him to imagine what that might mean for him and for the world he
lived in. Michael’s adoptive mother was a passionate social worker and activist,
involved in fighting for Aboriginal rights and environmental causes, including the
Fraser Island Defence Organisation. Her passion for social justice and her deep
empathy for Aboriginal people inform the foundation of Michael Cook’s practice.
Michael Cook won the Fisher’s Ghost Art Award and the Josephine Ulrick and Win
Schubert Photography People’s Choice Award and was also a finalist in the
Bowness Photography Prize. His artworks are held in all major Australian
collections, and in significant international collections, including the British
Museum, London, The Museum of World Cultures, Netherlands, Museum of
Contemporary Aboriginal Art, Utrecht, LA County Museum of Art, LA, and the
Kluge-Ruhe Aboriginal Art Collection, USA.
A full listing of exhibitions and writing about Cook’s work is at Artist CV.