Robert Fielding: UNDERBELLY.: N.Smith Gallery

For Robert Fielding, cars are part of Country.

Across the APY Lands, abandoned vehicles accumulate in car graveyards, their bodies slowly transformed by time, weather, rust, and the desert. Rather than seeing these vehicles as separate from the landscape, Robert understands them as part of the contemporary story of Mimili: objects that have travelled across Country, carried people between communities, and eventually come to rest within it.

In this new exhibition, Robert turns his attention to these cars through a series of paintings in his distinct visual language, alongside works that incorporate car parts into new manifestations of his connection to Country and culture. Through these works, the vehicle becomes both subject and material, allowing Robert to consider movement, memory, place, and the traces people leave across Country.

Cars have particular significance in remote communities, where vast distances make them essential to everyday life and connection. In Robert’s work, they also become records of change. Once abandoned, their surfaces continue to shift, becoming marked by exposure and time. Robert draws these objects back into a longer understanding of landscape, one that acknowledges Country as living, changing, and inclusive of the contemporary world. The exhibition coincides with Robert’s inclusion in Full Throttle at the National Gallery of Australia, where works from this ongoing exploration of cars and Country will also be presented, and his solo exhibition Melting Point at Samstag Gallery at the University of Adelaide.