Inès Cook
Artist Profile
Inès Cook creates oil paintings that animate toys, sculptures and imagined figures, staging a porous threshold between material and virtual worlds. Her deliberate, tactile handling of paint gives these invented subjects a curious physical presence: objects seem poised between still life and character, display shelf and game space. Drawing on video-game logic, childhood play and escapist fantasy, Cook treats painting as a form of world-building. The canvas becomes less a window than an active threshold, where imagination acquires weight, texture and the possibility of crossing into lived space.
Inès Cook is an Adelaide-based painter, and 2024 Bachelor of Visual Arts (Honours) graduate of Adelaide Central School of Art. Cook received the 2024 Hill-Smith Art Advisory Award and a Praxis ARTSPACE studio residency in 2024. She was a finalist in the 2025 Sorrento Art Prize, and most recently was the recipient of the Ed Tweddell Residency in 2026. She teaches oil painting at Adelaide Central School of Art.
