Cook Book

(2017-2019)

Cook Book explores the merging of traditional Aboriginal cultural practices with Westernised 21st-century knowledge and tools. As Aboriginal people, we have passed down stories to the next generation for hundreds of centuries to preserve timeless knowledge and our way of life—even through the onslaught of change that invasion and forced assimilation brought with it.

In our contemporary landscape, our cultural practices, rooted in natural systems and environments, have seamlessly integrated Western technologies and tools. The same practices, with the same outcomes, now incorporate contemporary tools during the ‘making’ period. This integration not only provides opportunities for our cultural practices and knowledge to be revisited but also reassures us of their continuity in a fast-paced and ever-changing environment.

Cook Book considers how Western implements have become part of Indigenous cultural practices in day-to-day activities through a play on language that acts as a narration. It is through the translation of phrases and instructions that Cook Book emphasises how our timeless practices and knowledge have evolved to ensure cultural continuity in the 21st Century despite the immeasurable changes around us.