12 December 2024
Three compelling contemporary artists have been awarded the University of South Australia Jeffrey Smart Commission, enabling them to showcase their ambitious exhibitions at the Samstag Museum of Art.
NSW-based artistic duo and Samstag scholars (2006) Sean Cordeiro and Claire Healy will premiere their vibrant moving image work Psychopomp and selected works in Samstag’s Wirltuti season in 2025 (Wirltuti meaning ‘spring’ in Kaurna culture).
Contemporary artist Robert Fielding has also been awarded a Jeffrey Smart Commission and will develop his exhibition Melting Point for Samstag’s 2026 program.
The Jeffrey Smart Commission, established in 2022 in honour of the late Jeffrey Smart, a South Australian School of Art alumnus, supports the development of a major new work or body of works, culminating in an exhibition at the gallery.
Awarded every three years, the commission is open to practitioners who are either alumni of UniSA or its antecedents; recipients of the Anne and Gordon Samstag Visual Arts Scholarship; or Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander practitioners.
The commission will enable Sean Cordeiro and Claire Healy to realise their cross-cultural moving image installation Psychopomp. It will link the Samstag Museum as a commissioning venue with the MATDOT Art Centre in Bangkok, the original location of the timely and complex exhibition.
Erica Green, Director, Samstag Museum of Art, says the art museum is proud to support artists by commissioning innovative new work.
“The substantial investment of the UniSA Jeffrey Smart Commission allows artists to invest time and resources in undertaking demanding projects. In a strong field, Sean Cordeiro and Claire Healy’s proposal stood out as persuasive and compelling,” she says.
Highly regarded both nationally and internationally, Cordeiro and Healy have established themselves over the past two decades as committed, inventive and resourceful artists working in moving image, installation and at scale.
This vibrant moving image work explores the porous relationship between science and mysticism, and rocket technology and spirituality.
From NASA’s Apollo, Mercury and Gemini mission names, which are directly inspired by the Greek gods of antiquity, to pioneer rocket scientist Jack Parson’s connection to Aleister Crowley’s Church of Thelema, Cordeiro and Healy identify a strong spiritual thread in the history of rocket and space exploration.
Melding the significant historical text, the poem Hymn to Pan, with footage of a farming fertility festival in Thailand and Laos, Psychopomp explores the expressive potential of motion, technology and pagan rituals.
Cordeiro and Healy will premiere Psychopomp and selected works in Samstag’s Wirltuti season in 2025 which launches on 1 March 2025.
Fellow contemporary artist Robert Fielding is also a Jeffrey Smart Commission recipient and will spend 2025 developing works for his exhibition titled Melting Point, to showcase in 2026. The work builds upon the collaborative working methods that Fielding is known for, and, in doing so, will represent an increased scope of scale and impact in his practice.
Fielding is of Pakistani, Afghan, Western Arrernte and Yankunytjatjara descent and lives in the Mimili Community in the remote Anangu Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara (APY) Lands in South Australia. Combining strong cultural roots with contemporary perspectives, his practice spans photography, works on paper, sculpture, film and installation.
Erica Green says Fielding’s work articulates a unique connection between his people and the earth, exploring what it means as an Aboriginal person to hold millennia of knowledge within Country.
“The panel was impressed with the way the artist navigates a path between Western specialised fine art production and making art on Country with community. We are thrilled to see how this incredible opportunity enriches his practice,” she says.
Fielding’s work has been exhibited at the Art Gallery of New South Wales as part of The National 4 for the 4th National Indigenous Art Triennial and is held in the collection of the National Gallery of Victoria. Fielding has also lectured at the Victorian College of Arts.
Samstag Museum of Art will present Melting Point in 2026. The museum’s full 2025 program will be revealed in the new year.
Samstag Museum of Art
Hawke Building, City West precinct, University of South Australia
55 North Terrace, Adelaide, SA 5000
Images available for download in Dropbox.
…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………
Media contact: Erica Green, Director Samstag Museum of Art M: +438 821 239 E: erica.green@unisa.edu.au
