Invasion 2017 is the artist’s most ambitious project to date in terms of scale and production. It took a full year to produce and involved a cast and crew of over twenty. In this series, Cook inverts history by staging an invasion of Britain by Aboriginal aliens. Set in London during the 1950/60s and borrowing the aesthetics of B-grade sci-fi movies, these aliens and oversized native Australian animals descend on the country wreaking chaos.

In Invasion (Telephone) a swarm of Rainbow Lorikeets, like something out of a scene from Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds, cause a frenzy on a busy London street. In Invasion (Beach grubs), super-sized witchetty grubs beamed down from flying saucers send seaside holidaymakers running. Cook also has embedded references to Australia’s conflicted post-contact history within these complex and highly detailed scenes. For example, the imposing of Christian belief systems on Aboriginal people is hinted at in a humorous way in Invasion (Beach grubs) that sees a golden Aboriginal man/alien emerging from the ocean carrying an injured non-indigenous woman, echoing religious saviour iconography.

Humour aside, these works capture the shock and fear Indigenous people must have experienced when the First Fleet arrived on Australian shores and harness the insight and empathy that is possible when inverting dominant stories with stories from the perspective of the  ‘other’.

Michael Cook
Invasion 2017
Left to right
Invasion (Beach grubs), Invasion (Telephone)
inkjet print on paper
edition 6 + 2 AP
Collection of Michael Rayner AM and Kylie Rayner
Courtesy the artist, Andrew Baker Art Dealer, Brisbane and THIS IS NO FANTASY, Melbourne