Alien, Cooks death, after Zoffany (2022), is based on Johann Zoffany’s painting The Death of Captain James Cook, 1795. Zoffany’s theatrical depiction is itself derived from the story of Cook’s death in Hawaii in 1779. ‘Alien’ Captain James Cook, bearing gifts of Venereal disease and Tuberculosis from foreign lands was initially mistaken by the Hawaiians to be the god Lono and welcomed with reverence. However, suspicion about Cook’s godliness swiftly evolved into hostility following Cook’s sudden return to the island due to storm damage incurred by the ship.  

The action of Alien, Cooks death, after Zoffany emanates from a direct mirroring along the central axis. Divergent versions of the one history painting spread left and right from a dense centre creating a compositional loop; we feel caught in the turbulence of two immense flapping wings. This dynamism is echoed in the mutations occurring in the details; figures morph into a new set of players. Cook’s face on either side is supplanted — on the left by that of Christ derived from Rubens’ painting The entombment, and Quilty’s father on the right with a comic Pinocchio nose.

The heroic Captain Cook conveyed by Zoffany, Captain Cook the Martyr slayed ruthlessly by the natives, breaks like a great wave upon the rocks and in the tumult surfaces questions of authority, narrative power, the legacy of colonisation and white man’s attitude towards difference.