Series: 'Majority Rules'

The new photographic series ‘Majority Rule’ (2014) by Bidjara artist Michael Cook denotes a completely new perspective of his ‘Modern Dreaming’ – a phrase coined by the artist to describe the ideology behind his bodies of work. Swarming his large-scale black-and-white images is duplication after duplication of the same male protagonist. Suspended in time, he is seen at significant and familiar sites around Brisbane, reclaiming them as his own and linking himself to the country. Despite his many selves, there is a deep and constant loneliness that connects the images. Like previous works, ‘Majority Rule’ asks us to ponder the impact and effects still suffered by Australian Indigenous people, and what it may have been like in Australia had there been a friendlier, more humble and understanding approach from the invaders that colonised this nation. ‘Majority Rule’ was presented at the Art Gallery of NSW for the 19th Biennale of Sydney (2014).

Cook’s is a playful, yet thought-provoking and salient reconstruction of Australian ‘history’. Paying homage to the surrealist master René Magritte and his strange but distinguishable ‘top hat’ men, Cook acknowledges an ignored and forgotten group in Majority Rule, Memorial – the Aboriginal Anzacs who fought in the First World War. Although they fought side-by-side with their white Australian comrades at Gallipoli in 1915, on returning to Australia they were as excluded and unaccepted as they had been before they left, barely referenced in our history books. In Cook’s reimagining, a congregation assembles around Brisbane’s Shrine of Remembrance, exploring and reclaiming each inch of the memorial as their own while the central protagonist gently bows his head in an endearing mark of respect.

Cook became interested in photography at a young age. After 25 years of working as an internationally successful fashion photographer, he developed a love of highly stylised images, evidenced by the dreamlike photographs he produces. Central to his practice is his Aboriginal ancestry, an investigation of Australian history and its connection to personal stories. His images are haunting responses to forced histories, colonisation and the era of first contact. Often his beautifully rendered bodies of work are presented as a storyboard imbued with questions, possibilities and hypothetical ideas of what may have been.

Cook’s ‘Civilised’ series of 2012 refers to a text written by Captain James Cook in his journal, in which he stated: ‘[T]hese people may truly be said to be in the pure state of nature, and may appear to some to be the most wretched upon the earth; but in reality they are far happier than we Europeans.’ The suite depicts Indigenous Australians in period attire of the four European powers that visited Australia around the time of colonisation: Dutch, Spanish, French and English. Using figures representative of his subliminal self, Cook explores the contemporaneous European assumption that the original inhabitants of Australia were not ‘civilised’. Cook’s work provokes more questions than answers as we are, sometimes uncomfortably, left to consider the narrative and to find our own truth in his powerful imagery.

Cook has been the subject of numerous solo exhibitions, including ‘Hear no … see no … speak no …’, Queensland Centre for Photography at Depot Gallery, Sydney (2013); ‘Civilised’, dianne tanzer gallery + projects, Melbourne (2013); ‘Broken Dreams’, October Gallery, London (2012); ‘Through My Eyes’, La Trobe University Visual Art Centre, Melbourne (2012); and ‘Uninhabited’, Andrew Baker Art Dealer, Brisbane (2011). He has also been included in a host of significant survey exhibitions, including ‘I Still Call Australia Home: Contemporary Art from Black Australia’, Queensland Art Gallery I Gallery of Modern Art, Brisbane (2013); UnDisclosed: 2nd National Indigenous Art Triennial, National Gallery of Australia, Canberra (2012); 7th Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art, Queensland Art Gallery I Gallery of Modern Art, Brisbane (2012–13); and 29th Telstra National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art Award, Museums and Art Galleries of the Northern Territory, Darwin (2012). Cook has been the recipient of the British Council’s ACCELERATE 2013 award, among others; and was named Visual Artist of the Year for the 14th and 17th Annual Deadly Awards, National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art Awards (2008 and 2011).