Australian World Heritage Residency | Inventive Australia

Michael Cook — Ok’gari (Fraser Island) (QLD) 

Biography: Michael Cook is a extremely celebrated Bidjara artist dwelling in southwest Queensland. Mr Cook’s work is presently on show in France at PHOTO AUSTRALIA’s ‘On Country: Photography from Australia’ – one of many world’s longest operating images festivals and the primary main survey of First Nations’ images offered on the Rencontres d’Arles. Mr Cook was a finalist within the National Photographic Portrait Prize in 2025, and in 2022 he received the Fisher’s Ghost Art Award and the Josephine Ulrick Photography People’s Choice Award. His works are held in all main Australian collections, and in vital worldwide collections, together with the British Museum, London; Fondation Opale, Switzerland; The Museum of World Cultures, Netherlands; Museum of Contemporary Aboriginal Art, Utrecht; LA County Museum of Art, LA; and the Kluge-Ruhe Aboriginal Art Collection, USA.  

Residency: Bidjara artist Michael Cook will develop a brand new artistic mission on okay’Gari (Fraser Island) in Queensland over a year-long residency. Drawing on his personal data of place and dealing carefully with the Butchulla folks, Michael will look at the early contact with the First Fleet and subsequent aftermath of colonisation on the island to culminate in a brand new photographic collection.  

^{Image credit score: Peter Lik, Copyright Tourism Queensland}