Michael Cook / Bidjara people / Australia b.1968 / Civilised #13 2012 / Inkjet prints on paper, ed. 5/8 / Purchased 2012. Queensland Art Gallery / Collection: Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art / © Michael Cook

Michael Cook
Civilised #13 2012

Not Currently on Display

In Michael Cook’s ‘Civilised’ series, Indigenous Australians are dressed in the period fashion of the four European countries — Spain, the Netherlands, England and France — whose explorers first visited Australia.

He incorporates text from the explorers’ writings and journals, in which they recorded their first contact with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. In restaging the past from an Indigenous perspective, Cook challenges the perceptions that underpin what it means to be civilised.

 

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. List and describe the elements of clothing that are worn by the people in Michael Cook’s ‘Civilised’ series. What do the symbols, colours and patterns tell you about clothing from different places and times throughout history?

2. Discuss Michael Cook’s use of traditional styles of European portraiture and costume to comment on contemporary issues. How do these photographs encourage us to re-evaluate Australia’s colonial history?

Classroom Activities

1. Imagine yourself in a strange country. Make an artwork of yourself in this new place. Consider how you might represent your nationality or ethnicity in an unfamiliar landscape.

2. Research Indigenous Australian artists who use photography to explore their identity and history — for example, Bindi Cole, Destiny Deacon and Christian Thompson. Create a digital self-portrait, incorporating the techniques used by some of the artists mentioned.


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