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The 2003 Award

The Artist is a Thief

by Stephen Gray


Nominated by:

  • State Library of Tasmania, Hobart, Australia

The Artist is a Thief by Stephen Gray

Publisher of Nominated Edition: Allen & Unwin 1865085332

the complete A-Z listing of nominated authors.
ABOUT THE BOOK
Margaret Thatcher Gandarrwuy is an internationally renowned Aboriginal artist from the remote Mission Hole community in the Northern Territory. Her works command high prices - until a new painting is unveiled. It is discovered slashed, with the worlds hastily scrawled across it, 'The artist is a thief'. Is the artist a thief? Is she to blame, or is she the victim of somebody else's fraud?
This is a philosophical detective novel with a difference, set in a world where everyone but the 'detective' knows the rules. Jean-Loup Wild, a Melbourne financial consultant sent by ATSIC to Mission Hole, is caught between the art world, with its wealth, fashions, heroes and sophisticated private language, and the Aboriginal community with its poverty, social problems, kinship ties and unchanging traditional law. If Jean-Loup can find the artist he can begin to find the secret of what has been happening at Mission Hole. He can begin, also, to understand how the layers of that mystery lie deep in the bedrock of Australian society.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Stephen Gray is a writer and law lecturer who has been living in Darwin since 1989. He teaches subjects in copyright law and indigenous peoples and the law, among others, and is involved in teaching Aboriginal students. Since 1991 he has published a number of articles about indigenous legal issues, including several about ways in which indigenous people can gain legal protection for their art and culture. His first novel, Lungfish, was published in 1999 and won the Jessie Litchfield Award for Literature. The Artist is a Thief won the Australian Vogel Literary Award in 2000.

Find out more about the author on the following websites:

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