Ray Cook: Money Up Front and No Kissing

Overview

Throughout his career spanning twenty plus years, Queensland based artist Ray Cook has consistently returned to discussions of queer theory and the changing role of the gay community. Threaded throughout his body of work is the visual language of the circus or carnival (stars, stripes and red noses abound), and the suggestion that being part of a community so long considered to be a freakish and perverse 'sideshow' to mainstream society, is more of a blessing than some might think.

Having opened in the weeks following Mardi Gras, the world's most visible display of queer culture, Cook's most recent body of work, Money Up Front and No Kissing, throws out a number of complex, nigh unanswerable questions: is assimilation really that desirable? What stands to be lost by throwing your lot in with the moral majority? Is political correctness really all it's cracked up to be? What happens to those who aren't so willing to give up the sharper edges of a lifestyle lived previously on the fringe?

While the carnival or sideshow motifs remain, this series has a far more sensual and sombre mood than Cook's earlier work, which is aesthetically more direct and contains a thinly veiled lasciviousness and a wicked sense of humour. Money Up Front and No Kissing's combination of Cook's signature symbolism with a darker, more pictorial visual style hints at the complex nature of the ideas behind his work. While this particular reviewer may feel totally unqualified to make a determination on any of the questions put forward, the encroaching darkness that shrouds the subjects seems to suggests that, while it's all good and well to talk of equality, Cook himself isn't totally convinced.

Image: Pauly, Ray Cook 2009