Conversations with Kim Mahood
During June and July, 1992, Townsville based artist, Kim Mahood journeyed through parts of the Northern Territory, revisiting areas in which she and her family had lived and travelled during her childhood. The journey was a physical as well as a psychic remapping: an investigation into the role of memory in the formation of identity and of culture. The following conversations with Pat Hoffie and with Sarah Follent, which took place prior to and after the journey, outline the process of Mahood's project. The first body of work which resulted from the journey was recently exhibited at Umbrella Studio, Townsville. The project was funded by the Queensland State Arts Division.
Pat Hoffie Your recent exhibition at First Draft West was called Encampment. It's a follow on, isn't it, from the theme you have been developing about journeys and encampments?
Kim Mahood Yes, it was a distillation of the ideas which started me on that particular body of work. It has to do with making journeys through a landscape and making camp, and I think what's important in my work is that the literal does have quite a strong influence on the way it's produced. When I'm building an installation, I'm drawing on the thousands of occasions when my family and I have made camp-and I often use the same sorts of materials and the skills that I learned then, in the process of making a work of art. They are the skills I learnt in the process of growing up in the bush and moving through it.
Pat Hoffie That suggests that your work is very much rooted in your experience of growing up in the Simpson Desert.
Kim... The rest of this article is available to subscribers of Eyeline