Robert Fielding Wins Australia’s $100,000 Hadley Art Prize With a Stack of Rusted Cars

Robert Fielding, a Western Arrernte and Yankunytjatjara artist based on APY (Anangu Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara) Lands in remote South Australia, has won the $100,000 Hadley’s Art Prize, Australia’s richest landscape art prize. Fielding’s winning work, Landscape, evokes traditional Anangu men’s body painting in a distinctly modern scene of wrecked cars on the road to his home of Mimili. A dot painting in ochre and rust, Landscape depicts a stack of crumpled steel skeletons baking in the sun, with burst bonnets and torn panelling.

“I’m still trying to take it all in,” Fielding said when the prize was announced. “This award means so much because it isn’t simply recognising one painting. It recognises the people who have guided me, believed in me and walked beside me. Today my name might be on the award, but this is nganampa – ours. It belongs to my family, my community, Mimili Maku Arts, and the Country that continues to teach me every day.”

Descended from both Stolen Generations and Afghan Pakistani camel drivers, Fielding is interested in the tensions between individual and collective identity, cultural knowledge and colonial legacies. His multidisciplinary works span photography, sculpture, printmaking, land-based installations and cultural materials. Based at Mimili Maku Arts, he incorporates objects, such as tin cans and car parts, salvaged from stretches of highway around his home town – places he’s called the “graveyards in-between” – as both subject and material.

Landscape is one of a series of recent works focused on the vehicles abandoned in the desert between Mimili and Indulkana. It’s a homage to both the machines that help families stay connected to Country and community, and to the stories that lie beneath Australia’s changing topography.

“This painting isn’t a destination,” Fielding said. “It’s a milestone in a much longer journey, a lifetime of returning to Country, learning from my Elders and growing into my place within community. Every journey, every conversation and every lesson has shaped the way I see. This painting is about relationship: relationship with Country, with my Elders, with community and with myself. That’s what I’ve been learning my whole life, and that’s what this award celebrates.”

Hadley’s Art Prize was established in 2017 by the owners of Hadley’s Orient Hotel in Hobart, one of the oldest operating hotels in the country. The prize, which is designed to celebrate contemporary landscape artists and nurture the Tasmanian arts scene, is awarded annually to an outstanding portrayal of the Australian landscape.

“This year’s exhibition reflects the extraordinary breadth of contemporary responses to the Australian landscape, bringing together emerging and established artists whose works challenge, expand and reimagine our understanding of place,” said the prize’s curator, Dr Amy Jackett. “Robert Fielding’s winning artwork encapsulates this beautifully by reminding us that landscape isn’t just about static natural beauty, but the deep human stories embedded in the world around us.”

Landscape was chosen from among 27 finalists by a judging panel consisting of multidisciplinary artist and five-time Archibald finalist Abdul Abdullah, art historian and writer Judith Ryan AM, and Mona curator Sarah Wallace. Western Australia’s Kelsey Ashe was awarded the $10,000 Hadley’s Residency Prize, as well as the $2000 IAS Art Handlers Award, while ACT artist Alice Mannheim won the $1000 Packing Room Prize.

The finalists’ paintings will be on display at Hadley’s Orient Hotel in Hobart from August 1 to 23. Admission is free, and all works are for sale.

hadleysartprize.com.au