Invasion (Kangaroo) 2017

Maker Michael Cook (1968)

Date2017

Object number00055773

NamePhotographic Works

MediumPhotographic Inkjet prints

DimensionsOverall: 1530 × 2233 mm
Image: 1354 × 1997 mm

ClassificationsArt

Credit LineAustralian National Maritime Museum Collection

Terms

DescriptionInvasion (Kangaroo) takes us into the heart of London streets — the road dividing tenement housing on the left from the high-end shops on the right. A kangaroo taller than a human shoots its laser eyes into a man whose arms are outstretched with agony — an echo of Jesus on the cross. Beams are directed between the flying objects overhead and the street, with children being sucked away from their mothers on the ground. Their disappearance is clandestine, just discernible in the beam; although the fallout on the street, the pram lying on its side and panic-stricken women, suggests the ricochet to come (the removal of children from Aboriginal families was actively practised in Australia Between 1869 and 1970). HistoryInvasion explores a savage attack — albeit leavened by its irony, flawless beauty of execution, retro-look and dated sensibility — with deliberately heightened drama. These elements assist its fiction, returning the brutal treatment that Australian Aboriginals have suffered, starting two hundred and thirty years ago, at the hands of British colonists. In the current atmosphere of climate change and environmental threat, the incursion of malevolent nature in the form of invading animals also channels a natural subversion that overthrows human dominance and control. SignificanceContemporary Aboriginal perspective on first contact and colonisation. Draws on the story of Tasmanian man Woorrady, who had been transfixed on the sight of the first French ships.