Michael Cook is an Aboriginal man whose photographic work interrogates Australian history since the arrival of Captain James Cook in 1770. When British naval officer James Cook made landfall and observed Aboriginal interaction with their natural environment, he noted the exquisite balance they had achieved. And acknowledged that the colonisation process that would follow his journey was likely to cause irrevocable change and damage to both this place and its peoples.1
Aboriginal peoples are traditionally connected to place, with country offering narratives, creation stories and sustenance of every sort—physical, cultural, emotional and cerebral. From 1900, Aboriginal people were removed from their own lands in Queensland, placed in missions with people with whom they had no connection—except for the trauma common to removal from their own country. This type of dislocation occurred all over Australia. Every Aboriginal nation was impacted in a way which continues to ricochet into contemporary lives.
With the images in his new series Livin’ the dream, Michael Cook (no relation to James Cook) imagines the impact of dislocation and the inequality with which Australia continues to live. An Aboriginal nuclear family headed by “Joey Jones” is transplanted into a remote outback community. While they bring with them aspirational “white” accoutrements—the luxury EH Holden car (1963), a swimming pool, a boat, and smart clothes—their facial expressions and physical stillness betray bewilderment; their ability to identify themselves is threatened and distanced by their removal from the familiar.
The background photographs are recent, describing the contemporary reality of a remote Aboriginal community. The quality of structure—a shelter held up by sticks, open to the dust and wind, a tiny shack with one door and no visible windows—is stark. The Jones however have a car—amongst the most luxurious of the 1960s era. A swimming pool is exotic, a status symbol plucked from the aspirational city, but is unused. Each of the Joneses is dressed smartly, but their material possessions cannot protect them from discomfort. The family cradle guinea pigs as though craving the comfort of connections that are denied them. These six images traverse the stark reality of making a home in a place that is foreign. They include symbolic detail which refers to history—but also to popular culture from Cook’s formative years.
Livin’ the dream (Sold) shows an unfenced block of land with a letter box and the archetypal kidney-shaped suburban swimming pool—but the dwelling is a few sticks which support a roof. A lounge chair and electric lamp sit.
beneath the flimsy roof; they are immaculate consumer items for the comfortable home. Given the reality of what we see, the title also evokes the other sense of “sold” as having been convinced of something that may be false. Livin’ the dream (Welcome home) shows the family in front of a neat house, the car parked beside it and an old bed frame in the front yard. Joey Jones stands stiffly, briefcase in one hand and flowers in the other, home from a long day to support the scene he confronts. Awaiting him are his wife and two children, also frozen in their stance.
Ordinary events for a family are the subject of Livin’ the dream (Birthday) and Livin’ the dream (BBQ). Yet they are images of a family that is uncomfortable, without the relaxation that goes with a casual celebration. In Livin’ the dream (Vacation), they line up behind the car (to go on holiday), but their arrangement is more akin to soldiers in formation than an excited family; they are rigid and unhappy. The last image, Livin’ the dream (For sale), suggests an ending of an aspirational dream, with Joey Jones alone in front of a tiny house, his station wagon open, a lawn mower lined up behind it. He leans on the front fence, noting a concept of “ownership” that is foreign to traditional Aboriginal society.
Cook has an ability to straddle worlds both Indigenous and non-Indigenous and his personal circumstances are an invisible rider to this series. His Aboriginal parentage is not obvious in his appearance; he moves seamlessly in and out of Aboriginal communities and any city in the world. He is aware that Aboriginal people in remote communities are sensitive to the perceptions of others about the way they live, and feel pressure to conform. Yet he is also aware of the strength of community in these remote places, its ability to support and nurture both people and place, and has experience of this connection himself, during his early life in Hervey Bay.
The actor who is “Joey Jones” is Joe Gala, a friend of Cook’s since childhood. Gala is Cook’s muse in a way, featuring in most of his photographic art series to date. Cook says, “Joe is the least materialistic person I know, which makes him ideal for this series. After being adopted and meeting my biological mother and mob in my early thirties, I understood certain habits, traits, thought systems in myself. I see in Joey the characteristics that ran through Indigenous peoples before European influence, a giving and sharing, and lack of interest in materialistic items.”
He adds, “Maybe everyone is blind to what they actually have. Keeping up with ‘The Joneses’, coveting what others own, may mean they miss what is right in front of them. Community, love for self and others and giving back, is there for anyone anytime. Yet we all seem to be moving away from the interactions that fill the void, and make us feel whole.”
Dysfunction, personal and societal, is an almost inevitable result of displacement. The global diaspora is here, the fracture of identity and community all over the world, as populations are forced, due to political or cultural demands, to leave. Cook’s recent images are located in remote Australia but the connection of identity to place is evoked and universal.
Written by LOUISE MARTIN-CHE W , MARCH 2020
To view the online exhibition, please click – HERE
Image: LIVIN ’ THE DREAM (BIRTHDAY) 2020
- James Cook, The Journals of Captain James Cook on His Voyages of Discovery, Voyageur Press, US, 2018. Cook wrote, “From what I have said of the Natives of New-Holland they may appear to some to be the most wretched peo- ple upon Earth, but in reality they are far more happier than we Europeans; being wholly unacquainted not only with the superfluous but the necessary Conveniences so much sought after in Europe, they are happy in not knowing the use of them. They live in a Tranquillity which is not disturb’d by the Inequality of Condition: The Earth and sea of their own accord furnishes them with all things necessary for life, they covet not Magnificent Houses, Household-stuff &c., they live in a warm and fine Climate and enjoy a very wholesome Air… In short they seem’d to set no Value upon any thing we gave them, nor would they ever part with any thing of their own for any one article we could offer them; this in my opinion argues that they think themselves provided with all the necessarys of Life and that they have no super- fluities.”
