Ray Cook

The cover of a recently released publication dedicated to Ray Cook depicts him as a juggling clown surrounded by celebrities. This performer is magnificent, clever and talented. He brings to my mind the theater of the absurd, which is still not out of date. Indeed, in his references to homoerotic fantasy, the artist is reminiscent of writer Jean Genet.

Nevertheless, with works dating to the 1990s and the first years of the 21st century, he also brings us down to earth, pointing out the existence of the HIV/AIDS epidemic and the public's revulsion towards infected people, cloaked in politeness. Cook's work is thus poetic, personal and a tart "nudge" to Brisbane's (Queensland) cabot culture. Born in 1962, the artist is actually self-taught. He began working as a photographic technician in Brisbane in the late 1980s and quickly settled into the studio and recognized the possibilities that photography offered as a theatrical medium and a center of expression. His talent and creative inventiveness, which are rather associated with the style of Joel Peter Witkin (whose work was presented at the 1986 Sydney Biennale), led him to "pursue the creation of fiction." In addition to Witkin, he also discovered another Australian photographer, Bill Henson, whose melancholic, symbolic images are filled with figures in moody situations.

Cook, however, does not just dwell on what is disturbing. His elaborate compositions often exude a great sense of humor. Involving friends and willing collaborators, he creates bizarre scenarios reminiscent of antique theater or burlesque. For example, a painting from 2001 entitled A prince imperial uses the artist's signature tones of pink and accents of red with an overall color palette of gothic character, consisting of soft blacks and whites. With a stomp worthy of a soap opera-style Shakespeare film adaptation, the figures in this horse portrait are set amidst props from an average Brisbane home that is long past its glory days. A magnificent horse with a proud rider, who hides his nakedness under a floral crown, stands amidst beer cans and pots of tropical plants dumped on a concrete terrace.

The show is a continuation of works from the 1990s, whose protagonists are also naked or semi-naked men, shown surrounded by skulls and vertebrae, artificial penises, lace and ropes. The slides have been deliberately scratched. Cook alludes to the scourge of HIV in her photographs, completely reevaluating social stigma and physical disfigurement (lesions become shining pearls and jewels). For example, in a work entitled ...at first I was afraid, I was petrified (...I was scared at first, I froze with terror) from 2002, which is essentially a portrait of the en trois quarts, a young boy with a pale torso, with sadomasochistic-style decorations (pierced nipples, a spiked metal collar around his neck), is at the same time wearing beautiful pink pearls that also float around his body. Cook's photographs thus perform an "inversion before the viewer's eyes". They use contrived costumes and grotesque props to play with cruel reality as in the theater of the absurd, and to aestheticize what is usually considered pathetic or horrible.

Reasons to be Cheerful is how Ray Cook describes himself in his recently published monograph. The selection of reliable spokespeople for his cause, coupled with the current publicity surrounding his photographic activities in Australia, is a result of the risks he has taken and his belief in his own convictions. Cook's photographic images are the result of a pressing HIV crisis and homophobic hostility: "photography became a medium through which I could transpose these horrors into a public context." For those of us who rotate through the wider community, his work is engaging and timely, and thought-provoking.