Zaachariaha Fielding
Hugo Michell Gallery are thrilled to return to Melbourne Art Fair 2025, presenting the work of two early career South Australian artists; Sam Gold and Zaachariaha Fielding, and Paul Yore as part of BEYOND 2025.
Sam Gold, Mmm I like your flow, humble little flow, 2025Stoneware porcelain and enamel, 102 x 36 x 11 cm irreg. Photography by Connor Patterson.
Sam Gold is an emerging ceramicist, who pushes the structural and conceptual capacity of clay. As objects, they materialise a kinship between Gold’s physical body, their psychological and emotional self, and the clay body, allowing Gold to explore states of futility, failure, resilience and grit, porousness yet inscrutability.
Zaachariaha Fielding, Untitled (672-24AS), 2024-25, acrylic and mixed media on Belgian linen, 199 x 294 cm, photography by Sam Roberts
Zaachariaha Fielding is a multi-disciplinary artist who hails from Mimili community on the APY Lands in far north South Australia. Fielding comes from a long line of multi-disciplinary artists and after a successful music career over the last decade, he now explores the visual language of his culture through painting.
Paul Yore’s installation ‘FUCK ME DEAD’, a vibrantly mosaiced hearse, upcycled and modified from an iconic Australian car, the ’70s Ford Fairlane, will be presented as part of Melbourne Art Fair’s 2025 BEYOND sector, curated by Anna Briers, Curator, Len Lye & Contemporary Art, Govett-Brewster Art Gallery (Aotearoa), in collaboration with STATION.
Paul Yore, Fuck Me Dead (installation view, Carriageworks), 2022, mixed media assemblage comprising funeral hearse, found objects, glass, shells, LED lights, acrylic paint and plastic flooring, 592.5 x 379 x 149 cm
Melbourne Art Fair will be open from 20–23 February 2025 at the Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Centre.
Pictured (Top): Pictured: Zaachariaha Fielding, Untitled (671-24AS), 2024, acrylic and mixed media on Belgian linen, 166 x 151 cm, photography by Sam Roberts
Congratulations to Zaachariaha Fielding, Ildiko Kovacs, and Richard Lewer who have been selected as finalists in the 2024 Mosman Art Prize!
Also congratulating previous exhibiting artist Marisa Purcell and Christopher Zanko, who will be exhibiting with us in 2025, for also being named as finalists.
The Mosman Art Prize is the longest running and most prestigious municipal art prize in Australia. Winning entries form the basis of the Mosman Art Collection, a valuable and historic collection that surveys Australian painting since 1947. The Mosman Art Prize is an acquisitive award of $70,000 sponsored by Mosman Council.
Finalist works will be on display from 10 August to 6 October 2024 at Mosman Art Gallery, NSW.
Richard Lewer, Let Me Tell You a Story, 2024. Acrylic on found table, 150 x 90 cm
Zaachariaha Fielding, Paralpi, 2024, acrylic on linen, 152 x 122 cm
Ildiko Kovacs, Shine, 2024, oil on linen, 122 x 70 cm.
ARTIST NEWS
We are delighted to share that Zaachariaha Fielding and Idiko Kovacs have been announced as finalists in the 2024 Wynne and Sulman Prizes.
Winner of the 2023 Wynne Prize, Zaachariaha Fielding has been named as a finalist in both the Wynne and Sulman Prizes. About his work in the Sulman Prize, Zaachariaha states: “I am one of nine children, Robert and Kay’s oldest. Since my birth, the songs of my Country have filled my soul. Alongside their beautiful lessons, came my responsibility to protect and celebrate this knowledge. These songs will always be the most immense joy of my life, my anchor and my kurunpa (spirit). They kept me safe as I grew up in one of the toughest places in Australia, amongst violence and sickness. While the brightest and loudest discussed how to close the gap, how to make First Nations people healthy and live another 20 years, Australia voted ‘no’. Some referred to my achievement of winning last year’s Wynne Prize as winning the lottery, as if it was a fluke. I’m left to wonder: will me and my mob ever have access to those ‘lucky numbers’?”
Zaachariaha Fielding, Who won the lotto?, synthetic polymer paint on linen, 200 x 152.4 cm
This work depicts the sounds of Paralpi, a special place found just outside of Mimili on the eastern part of the Aṉangu Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara (APY) Lands, South Australia. ‘Paralpi is a place where people come to embrace and celebrate children,’ says Fielding. ‘They are taught by the Elders how to move and mimic their clan emblem, and, for Mimili, this has always been the maku (witchetty grub).’
Paralpi is an extension of Fielding’s previous Inma series (2019–23), which includes the titular work that won him the 2023 Wynne Prize. Fielding’s scratchy application of Pitjantjatjara text as a stylistic element used to outline and define Country also captures reverberations of bodies performing the act of inma (ceremonial song and dance).
‘When this inma is sung, the sounds of the soprano, alto, tenors and baritone are thick, hitting the heart and then returning to the ngura (country),’ Fielding describes. According to Fielding, who is also a finalist in the 2024 Sulman Prize, this is a cyclical process unique to Aṉangu culture, which celebrates one’s interconnectedness with the land.
Zaachariaha Fielding, Paralpi, 2023, acrylic and ink on canvas, 300 x 200 cm
About her work selected as a finalist in the Sulman Prize, Ildiko Kovacs shares: “Two-up is a gambling game played on Anzac Day. Tossing a coin upward and its inevitable falling are attributes of a certain kind of line. It isn’t a straight line, nor a singular line, but a line drawn from kinetic energy. A line fuelled with emotion, unpredictability and the excitement of chance.”
Ildiko Kovacs, Two-up, oil on wood, 220 x 90 cm
We would also like to extend our congratulations to Christopher Zanko who the gallery is excited to be working with in 2025.
Congratulations Zaachariaha, Ildiko, and all the finalists!
The Archibald, Wynne, and Sulman Prizes will be on display at the Art Gallery of New South Wales from 8 June to 8 September 2024.