We acknowledge the Traditional Owners of the land on which the Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art stands and recognise the creative contribution First Australians make to the art and culture of this country.
Michael Cook / Bidjara people / Australia b.1968 / Civilised #1, #2, #6, #10 2012 / Inkjet prints / Purchased 2012. Queensland Art Gallery / Collection: Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art / © Michael Cook
Michael CookCivilised #1, #2, #6, #10 2012
Not Currently on Display
Michael Cook’s photographs imagine how history may have been different if Europeans had understood that the Aborigines they encountered lived in harmony with the land. Cook’s dreamlike images restage the early histories of Australia’s colonisation and represent the artist’s own modern dreaming.
In Cook’s Civilised series, Aboriginal Australians are dressed in the period fashions of the four European countries whose explorers visited Australia during this period. He also incorporates text from the explorers’ writings and journals that recorded first contact with Indigenous people. In restaging the past, Cook opens a dialogue about the future for all Australians.
Michael Cook is a descendant of the Bidjara people of south-west Queensland. Adopted as an infant by a non-Indigenous family, he was later encouraged to find his Aboriginal birth mother and to learn about his heritage.
A successful commercial fashion photographer in Australia and overseas for over 25 years, Cook was drawn to art photography as a means to explore his ancestry. His expertise in digital image-making and post-production techniques lends an ethereal quality to this re-imagining of Australian history.
Cook constructs his images in a manner more akin to painting than to traditional photographic studios or documentary models.
Discussion Questions
1. How does Cook uses traditional styles of European and Renaissance portraiture and costume to comment on contemporary ideas about culture and privileged?
2. Why do you think the artist has chosen to include texts describing firsthand accounts of European contact with Australia’s Indigenous inhabitants?
3. What if Indigenous Australia was able to build upon its sovereignty without the influence of European colonisation?
Activities
Devise a series of images by imagining a ‘what if’ scenario that challenges a common point of view regarding an issue that is important to you. Start by selecting an issue that you believe could be improved by a major change in current thinking (e.g. What if teenagers were elected to lead nations?). Next, determine a point in time (recent or historical) when the change would be of most impact. Use photography or illustration to plan your imagery and factor in visual codes such as costuming and props.