Award-winning Indigenous photographer Michael Cook will share his insights into his latest work at a special public event at the Tweed Regional Gallery gallery on Sunday.
The gallery is the first public gallery to host the full suite of works by the Brisbane-based photomedia artist of Bidjara heritage, entitled Mother.
Gallery director, Susi Muddiman, who will take part in an ‘in-conversation’ with Cook OAM, said Mother is ‘a journey through 13 images of a woman in a deserted Australian landscape’.
‘This emotionally engaging series explores a universal theme that is crucial to the well being of all,’ Ms Muddiman said.
‘The love or absence of a mother is paramount to the development and future of each child the world over.
‘These are powerful and evocative images that possess an arrested stillness. Each of them speaks to something dramatic, and has a sense of loss or regret.
‘The experience or the idea of loss and longing is something we can all connect to in some way,’ she said.
Cook has tackled subjects from the political to the historical since 2009.
‘In Mother we see his most intensely personal work to date,’ Ms Muddiman said.
‘While these images speak directly and poetically to Australia’s Stolen Generation, they also speak to a universal experience of disconnection between mother and child.’
Cook says he creates artwork about Indigenous issues, past and present, about how the past relates to the present and, eventually, moulds the future.
‘I’m not sure whether I really need to belong anywhere. Put simply, I’m a person of mixed ancestry – some of which is Indigenous,’ he said.
‘I look at the big picture, I am Australian, I tell my stories to Australians of all races and also to those beyond our shores. I am a part of the human race.’
The ‘In Conversation’ event will be held on Sunday at 2pm.Entry is free and no bookings required.
The exhibition, supported by Hong Kong art collectors Alan Conder and Alan Pigott, will be on display at the gallery till 11 December.
Also available to secondary school teachers is an education resource featuring an essay by Rhoda Roberts. This resource is available for downloading from the gallery’s website at http://artgallery.tweed.nsw.gov.au/ResourcesAndActivities.
For four decades The Echo has printed the stories some people loved, some people hated, and some pretended not to read. If you want us to keep telling the truth, the real truth, not the sugar-coated version. We’ll need your support to keep the presses rolling. 
