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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.

 

Artist CV