Position Doubtful by Kim Mahood

Sale price$33.00
Type
Paperback
Author
Dimensions
210mmx136mm
Weight
0.356
ISBN
9781925321685
Published
August 15, 2016
Publisher
Scribe Publications
Number of Pages
336
Stock
In stock
About

Imagine the document you have before you is not a book but a map. It is well-used, creased, and folded, so that when you open it, no matter how carefully, something tears and a line that is neither latitude nor longitude opens in the hidden geography of the place you are about to enter.

Since the publication of her prize-winning memoir Craft for a Dry Lake, in 2000, writer and artist Kim Mahood has been returning to the Tanami desert country in far north-western Australia where, as a child, she lived with her family on a remote cattle station. The land is timeless, but much has changed- the station has been handed back to its traditional owners; the mining companies have arrived; and Aboriginal art has flourished.

Comedy and tragedy, familiarity and uncertainty are Mahood's constant companions as she immerses herself in the life of a small community and in groundbreaking mapping projects. What emerges in Position Doubtful is a revelation of the significance of the land to its people - and of the burden of history.  

Mahood is an artist of astonishing versatility. She works with words, with paint, with installations, and with performance art. Her writing about her own work and collaborations, and about the work of the desert artists, is profoundly enlightening, making palpable the link between artist and country. This is a beautiful and intense exploration of friendships, landscape, and homecoming.

Written with great energy and humour, Position Doubtful offers a unique portrait of the complexities of black and white relations in contemporary Australia.

Kim Mahood

Author

Kim Mahood

Kim Mahood is a writer and artist who grew up in Central Australia and
on Tanami Downs Station. She has worked closely with Aboriginal people
across Australia’s desert regions, maintains strong connections with
Warlpiri and Walmajarri people, and has extensive experience in cultural
and environmental mapping projects in the Tanami and Great Sandy
Desert, western New South Wales, the Top End, Perth, and Fremantle, and
the Great Victoria Desert. She is the author of two previous non-fiction
books: Craft for a Dry Lake (2000) and Position Doubtful (2016, and the co-editor of Desert Lake: art, science and stories from Paruku (2013). Her work has received numerous awards, and is published in literary, art, and current affairs journals.

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