Compelling & Intimate

David Cook’s vibrant portrayal of his 1990s Hamilton East neighbours explodes from large-scale prints in the New Zealand Portrait Gallery Te Pūkenga Whakaata and from the pages of his book Jellicoe & Bledisloe (published by Rim Books). But framing Cook’s photographs is a layer of time that pulls us back and forth between the work and our current reality and shapes the meaning of what we are looking at.

Cook began the series after moving into a former state house at 33 Bledisloe Terrace in 1989. He worked full-time at Waikato Museum and his photographic work was commissioned by the curators there.

While he loved the museum projects, as an artist he felt it was a long time since he had done anything fuelled by his own curiosity and intentions. With a growing young family he could not travel to places that might stimulate his creativity. So, as is often the case in Cook’s projects, he turned to a community for inspiration; the lives of his Māori and Pākehā state house neighbours over the fence and down the