For Michael Cook, photography is a means of reimagining and rewriting. His language is embedded in questions of what was, what is, what might have been, and what could be. Conditioned, the Bidjara artist’s first book for Perimeter Editions, draws upon key series from the last decade to prise open histories and imaginaries that simmer between Indigenous and European experiences, perspectives, and consciousness. Cook works in an almost cinematic mode, using the camera as an elaborate choreographic and narrative device, meticulously layering and editing his images from countless shoots on location. The resulting images are quietly virtuosic. Soft, painterly tones and fastidious compositional details provide a filmic backdrop for historical pathos, speculative futures, imaginary leaps, and unrestrained what-ifs. They veer between the sumptuous and the stark, the historical and the speculative, the political and the playful. Amidst Conditioned’s lushly printed plates – which are punctuated by abstracted texts and phraseology – Cook invites us on a kaleidoscopic trip through Indigenous parliamentary takeovers, luxury European shopping sprees, autobiographic asides, and colonial inversions – where Aboriginal characters assume the role of alien invaders, and supersized Australian wildlife wreak havoc upon iconic London streets. It is a journey of reflection, resistance, and freewheeling imagination.
