Robert Fielding – Routes/Roots

Robert Fielding is a contemporary artist of Pakistani, Afghan, Western Arrente and Yankunytjatjara descent, who lives in Mimili Community in the remote Anangu Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara (APY) Lands. Fielding’s work combines strong cultural roots with contemporary perspectives.

Fielding won the work on paper category at the National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Awards in 2015 and 2017. He also won the 2015 Desart Art Worker Prize. Following solo exhibitions in Adelaide and Melbourne, he celebrated his first international solo exhibition at the Fondation Opale in Switzerland in late 2018. Fielding’s artwork is held in major institutions and collections in Australia and overseas.

For Linden New Art Fielding will present a survey exhibition grounded in archival, institutional and community research, which raises questions about ownership of cultural knowledge and the institutionalisation of sacred objects. Led by an enquiry into cultural objects that have been collected and removed from country since the beginning of colonisation, Fielding has been researching the links of his ancestors’ travel and trade routes, reconsidering them in a contemporary context.

Encompassing multiple media, such as photography, sculpture, and carvings, the exhibition also includes collaborative works made with two of the senior leaders of Mimili, Sammy and Ngilan Dodd. These works in particular investigate the maintenance of and care for resources, which has been a finely balanced process for thousands of years around the artist’s home.