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APY Art Centre Collective artist Zaachariaha Fielding wins the Wynne Prize

An artist who works at the controversial APY Art Centre Collective and began painting three years ago has won the nation’s top award for landscape painting, the Wynne Prize.

Zaachariaha Fielding, from the APY Lands, with his Wynne Prize winner, Inma, at the Art Gallery of NSW on Friday. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Jeremy Piper
Zaachariaha Fielding, from the APY Lands, with his Wynne Prize winner, Inma, at the Art Gallery of NSW on Friday. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Jeremy Piper

An artist who works at the controversial APY Art Centre Collective and began painting three years ago when Covid interrupted his music career has won the ­nation’s top award for landscape painting, the Wynne Prize.

Zaachariaha Fielding, from Mimili in the eastern APY Lands of South Australia, won the $50,000 prize with his monumental painting, Inma, beating a field that included an entry by John Olsen, painted before his death last month.

“The work is music and I am music,” Fielding said of his winning work that depicts the sounds around Mimili.

Fielding works with the APY Art Centre Collective, the Indigenous art organisation that is at the centre of this newspaper’s “white hands on black art” investigation.

The allegations include that non-Indigenous staff of the art centre painted parts of paintings that were attributed to Indigenous APY artists.

At least 10 works by APY artists have been selected as finalists in the Wynne, Sulman and Archibald prizes, which are held concurrently at the Art Gallery of NSW. The winners were announced at the gallery on Friday, including ­Archibald winner Julia Gutman with her portrait of singer-songwriter Montaigne.

Fielding, also known as one half of soul-pop duo Electric Fields, thanked the elders of the Mimili community and the team at the APYACC, including manager Skye O’Meara.

“I have seen a lot of crazy in this industry, which is very interesting,” he said at the AGNSW. “We know who we are, we stand strong, I am so proud of our work, our studio, our staff and my teachers.”

Asked later about the allegations concerning the APYACC, Fielding declined to comment. “It’s interesting what people can do to hurt other people,” he said.

He did not respond to a series of questions from The Australian, sent to him via the AGNSW.

Another APY finalist in the Wynne is Sally Scales, a member of the APYACC board and of the National Gallery of Australia governing council.

Wynne Prize winner Fielding. Picture: Getty Images
Wynne Prize winner Fielding. Picture: Getty Images

Scales also declined to comment about the controversy that has engulfed the art centre. The NGA has said she will recuse herself from talks about an inquiry into the authorship of 28 APY artworks intended for the NGA’s Ngura Pulka exhibition in June.

Finalists in the Archibald and Wynne prizes are selected and judged by the 11 trustees of the AGNSW. The Sulman is decided by a guest judge.

This year the gallery received 2348 entries across the three awards – including the highest number from Indigenous artists – before entries closed on March 31. The Australian published the first allegations of “white hands on black art” on April 7.

AGNSW curator Anne Ryan, who is responsible for organising the prize exhibition, said the trustees did not take into account the names of artists or their origins when selecting the finalists.

Before he took up a paintbrush at the urging of his artist father, Robert Fielding, Fielding was better known for painting colours in the air with his high, soulful voice.

A flamboyant frontman with Electric Fields, he was due to tour the US with musical partner ­Michael Ross when the pandemic caused the dates to be cancelled.

“I started painting when my shows were all cancelled in America, in my other job, because of Covid,” he said, as he thanked his supporters.

“But it also gave me another ­career, which has been interesting. I had no idea what was possible.”

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Original URL: https://www.theaustralian.com.au/nation/indigenous/apy-art-centre-collective-artist-zaachariaha-fielding-wins-the-wynne-prize/news-story/c94a0114f4b02168076a260322e453a1