ARTWORK DONATION – SILENT AUCTION
Phillip Cook, Rail Embankment and Bridge - Helena River Reserve, 2026 oil on board.
On display at Midland Junction Arts Centre
This work has been donated to MAC Inc. to be sold via silent auction to raise funds to present arts and cultural activity in the region.
To place a bid, please email your name, highest bid, email and contact phone number to info@midlandjunctionartscentre.com.au
Bidding closes 15 Sept. The person with the highest bid at this time will be contacted to finalise the purchase of the work.
PHILLIP COOK (born 1949) is a meticulous local painter whose practice centres around the landscape, his enchantment with the natural world and a fascination with scale, composition and a refined quality of drawing.
Rail Embankment and Bridge - Helena River Reserve captures an area near the artist’s home, where he frequently walks and enjoys the natural foliage and light, set against the formal footbridge as the seasons change.
BIO
PHILLIP COOK studied at James Street Technical College in Perth, gaining a Diploma of Fine Art in 1968, before travelling to Victoria in 1970 to study under William Frater, Tim Guthrie and Alan Martin. He honed his technical skills at Heatherly School of Art in London in 1972 before completing an Associateship in Fine Art at Curtin University, Western Australia in 1976. Working from his home studio in West Midland, Cook has held a long association with Mundaring Arts Centre and its cohort of artists, participating in early fundraising initiatives in the late 1980’s and exhibiting alongside fellow Shire of Mundaring Art Collection artists Elizabeth Blair Barber and Jenny Mills at Cremorne Gallery in the early 1970s.
Cook grew up in a family of artists — both his parents painted — and his earliest memory of the creative process is watching his father work in the studio, the visual world emerging from brushstrokes onto primed Masonite. A considerable part of his practice has centred on the landscape of the Swan Valley, where his family owned a vineyard established by his grandfather. That sense of inherited connection to place and of not taking the visual world for granted, runs through everything he makes. His subjects range widely: still life, cityscapes, railway yards and engines, urban housing, nightscapes, the Port City of Fremantle, and the wide arid country of WA's interior. He values strong composition and drawing, works across scales from intimate to large, and has maintained a weekly life drawing practice since 1992 as the essential discipline underpins his visual expression.
SELECTED EXHIBITIONS
1969 First exhibited with the Perth Society of Artists
1970 Joint exhibition with Allon Cook
1971 Joint exhibition with Bob Hitchcock and Madeleine Longden, Cremorne Art Gallery, Perth
1973 Joint exhibition with Elizabeth Blair Barber, Cremorne Gallery, Perth
1974 Festival of Perth Group Exhibition, Cremorne Gallery
1974 Centaur Art Group Exhibition, Cremorne Gallery
1979 Solo exhibition, Fremantle Arts Centre, WA
1980 Solo exhibition, Fremantle Arts Centre, WA
1981 Joint exhibition with Jenny Mills, Balingup Cheese Factory
1981 Pegasus Invitation Art Award, Art Gallery of Western Australia
1982 Landscape Images, Fremantle Arts Centre, WA
1986 WA Week Invitation Exhibition, Fremantle Arts Centre, WA
1987 Solo exhibition, Fremantle Arts Centre, WA
1988–2014 Gunyulgup Galleries, Yallingup (regular)
1994 The Junction: Contemporary Artists Look at Midland, Kalla Yeedip Gallery
1995–2004 Lamont's Gallery, Swan Valley (regular showings)
2002 New Paintings (solo), Gallery East, North Fremantle
2002 Covering Your Work — Celebrating 30 Years, Fremantle Arts Centre
2003 Recent Works (solo), Gallery East, North Fremantle
2005 Solo exhibition, Gallery East, North Fremantle
2006 Mine Own Executioner, Mundaring Arts Centre, WA
2007 Here & Elsewhere (with Drusilla Williams), Gallery East, North Fremantle
2013 Shire of Mundaring Art Collection Acquisition Exhibition, Mundaring Arts Centre, WA
2024 Building Fabric, Midland Junction Arts Centre, WA
AWARDS
1974 Royal Agricultural Society Art Acquisition
1975 Narembeen Art Prize
1977 Albany Art Prize
1978 Williams Art Prize
COLLECTIONS
Works in private collections in Australia, Britian, America, New Zealand including:
Art Gallery of Western Australia
Bank West Collection
Beverley Art Collection
Bunbury Art Gallery
CSBP & Farmers Collection
Curtin University Collection
Fremantle Art Collection
Holmes à Court Collection
Parliament House Art Collection
Perth Technical College
Princess Margeret Hospital Art Collection
Shire of Mundaring Art Collection
Queen Elizabeth Medical Centre
Royal Agricultural Society
Royal Perth Hospital
St John of Gods Hospital, Murdoch
Swan Districts Regional Hospital
Swan Valley Tourism Centre
University of Western Australia Collection
West Australian Chamber of Commerce