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, Adelaide.
New South Wales 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 which launces on 1 March 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.

Sean Cordeiro and Claire Healy, Psychopomp, 2024, production still. Courtesy the artists, N. Smith Gallery, Sydney and MAGMA Galleries, Melbourne

Robert Fielding in his studio at Mimili Maku Arts. Courtesy the artist and Mimili Maku Arts, Northern Territory
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 Cordeiro and 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.
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.
Fellow recipient, Fielding 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.