COOK 2021.673

Michael Cook’s ‘Natures Mortes’ series draws on visual strategies affiliated with the still life genre – particularly the memento mori, a visual reminder of the inevitability of death – to highlight the devastating impact of colonisation from an Indigenous point of view.

In Nature Morte (Agriculture), Cook brings attention to the loss of Indigenous agricultural methods caused by the rapid introduction of unsustainable European farming practices. Shown visually by blades of broken kangaroo grass, shadowed by the looming figure of a predatory barn owl, Cook’s evocative tableaux symbolise the damage caused to traditional Aboriginal culture and the natural environment by European settlement.