MICHAEL COOK, Through My Eyes #23 Robert Hawke, 2010, Artist's Proof 2/2

MICHAEL COOK Bidjara language, born 1968 Through My Eyes #23 Robert Hawke, 2010, Artist's Proof 2/2 Inkjet print (Epson UltraChrome K3 inks on Hahnemuhle Photo Rag Bright White 310 gsm paper) 61 x 50 cm; 95 x 79 cm (framed) signed centre front, A/P PROVENANCE The Artist, Queensland Redlands School, New South Wales, donated by the artist for the 15th Redlands Westpac Art Prize Private Collection, New South Wales EXHIBITED 15th Redlands Westpac Art Prize, 2010, Mosman Art Gallery, New South Wales Michael Cook: Through My Eyes, 2010, Andrew Baker Art Dealer, Queensland* Undiscovered, 17 August - 7 November 2020, University of the Sunshine Coast Gallery, Queensland* This proof belongs to the earliest and most consequential phase of Through My Eyes, Michael Cook's series superimposing the faces of Indigenous men and women over official portraits of Australian prime ministers. Issued as Artist's Proof 2/2, it dates from the formative stage of a suite that ultimately comprised twenty-seven works, one for each prime minister from Federation to 2010. The image itself, the Hawke portrait, occupies a singular place within Cook's practice. It was the first work he attempted in testing whether the series' concept could succeed, and it absorbed months of iteration before the wider suite followed. As Andrew Baker, who has represented Cook since the outset of his career, noted, "the Hawke print was the one Michael initially worked on to see if the concept was viable... because of the months of work it consumed, it can be considered as 'the' seminal work from Michael's whole artistic career." Among the twenty-seven portraits, the Hawke print is distinguished further by the intensity of its gaze: the eyes of the prime minister and the superimposed Indigenous man meet and look outward together, so that the viewer encounters both men simultaneously, seen and seeing at once. Through My Eyes destabilises the authority of the official portrait by insisting on the presence of those its subjects excluded. As Bruce Johnson-McLean of Monash University Museum of Art writes, "Cook's imagery challenges our known history and imagines an alternative world in which the faces of those who were excluded are as prevalent as those who excluded them." The Hawke print carries this argument in its most concentrated form: a single, doubled gaze that asks the viewer to reconsider not only who has held power in Australia, but whose faces and histories successive governments allowed to be forgotten. * denotes another artwork from this edition © MICHAEL COOK / Copyright Agency, 2026

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