Mother: Tweed Regional Gallery

Michael Cook

26 Aug - 11 Dec 2016

Michael Cook’s Mother series is currently on exhibition at Tweed River Gallery.

Mother is a journey through thirteen images of a woman in a deserted Australian landscape. The ‘mother’ is always alone, her baby absent, although evidence of a child remains in the empty pram, abandoned toys on the Hopscotch court, the slackness of the skipping rope. These images possess an arrested stillness that speaks to a recently bereft status.

Cook has tackled subjects, from the political to the historical, since 2009. In Mother we see his most intensely personal work to date. While these images speak directly and poetically to Australia’s Stolen Generation, they speak also to a universal experience of disconnection between mother and child. They powerfully evoke the essential nature of the relationship between mother and child that is at the heart of human experience. Seductive yet enigmatic, Cook’s vignettes construct a psychological mirror between personal experience and political power.

The Tweed Regional Gallery acknowledges the generous support of collectors Alan Conder and Alan Pigott in presenting this exhibition.