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Position Doubtful: mapping landscapes and memories
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About Position Doubtful: Mapping Landscapes And Memories
Product Description SHORTLISTED FOR THE 2017 VICTORIAN PREMIER’S LITERARY AWARDS FOR NON-FICTION This is a beautiful exploration of friendships and landscape and the complexities of black and white relations in contemporary Australia. 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. PRAISE FOR KIM MAHOOD “[Mahood] is a talented writer whose mastery of the language is absolute. The combination of an artist’s eye, a mapmaker’s precision, and a wordsmith’s playfulness makes for a work of captivating beauty…a significant and timely work.” ―The Weekend Australian “An extraordinary excavation of the relationship, past and present, between settlers and indigenous Australians, deeply grounded in this alluring tract of desert, but with relevance for us all.” ―The Monthly Review “Kim Mahood is an astonishing treasure: an accomplished artist and writer who is equally well-equipped to navigate both Aboriginal and settler Australia. Her lyrical yet unsentimental memoir is a story of honouring the knowledge that two cultures have mapped upon each other, a lesson the entire globe needs to learn.” ―William L. Fox, Director, Center for Art + Environment, Nevada Museum of Art “A shimmering, evocative memoir [that is] required reading for anyone interested in contemporary Aboriginal Australia…Position Doubtful opens the heart to understanding.“ ―Books+Publishing “An extraordinary excavation of the relationship, past and present, between settlers and indigenous Australians, deeply grounded in this alluring tract of desert, but with relevance for us all.” ―The Monthly “Mahood brings a formidable intelligence to her work as a writer and an artist, but also a sly humour here and an almost uncanny talent for observation…By charting these wanderings with such eloquence and scrupulous self-examination, she has created in Position Doubtful a true map of the heart.” ―The Saturday Paper “[Mahood] is a talented writer whose mastery of the language is absolute. The combination of an artist’s eye, a mapmaker’s precision, and a wordsmith’s playfulness makes for a work of captivating beauty…a significant and timely work.” ―Weekend Australian “There is something profound about the directness and clarity with which Kim Mahood writes about her art, and her life, in particular her relationship with the land she grew up in and on, and her relationship to the indigenous people who have lived on that land much longer than she. As Mahood writes of―quite literally―bu
