T SERIES

A NOTE ON THE PHOTOGRAPHY: At the time T Australia commissioned this portfolio, much of the country was in lockdown. As such, our portrait photographer, Kelly Geddes, undertook T Australia’s very first remote shoot, via Facetime and Zoom. Geddes revelled in the challenge, using screenshots and photos of her computer screen to capture the scenes, the latter technique producing some of her favourite pictures. “They had a natural and raw quality to them,” she says. The files were sent to the darkroom service Blanco Negro, where they were hand-printed from a digital enlarger, toned in the darkroom as silver gelatin prints and then scanned for publication as black-and-white images. Each subject wears a T-shirt by the Australian label Nobody Denim; the same style appears in flat lay photographs throughout the portfolio. In these, the T-shirt serves as a “blank canvas”, altered by the subjects in a way that represents the legacy they hope to leave.

A version of this article appears in print in our fourth edition, Page 82 of T Australia with the headline:
“Tomorrow’s Heroes”
Order a copy | Subscribe

When the frontman of the electronic duo Electric Fields says his first performance, at the age of eight, was a rendition of Elvis Presley’s “Blue Suede Shoes” at a school assembly, it hardly comes as a surprise. His class-mates may have held cue cards to help him with the lyrics, but it seems the nascent singer already possessed a preternatural musicality that eluded any genre or style. Like Presley, who was influenced by gospel, borrowed from rhythm-and-blues and ushered in a new, hybridised genre, “rockabilly”, Zaachariaha Fielding would go on to remix and layer music all his own. He just didn’t know it yet.

“I always knew I was going to be an entertainer from a very young age,” says Fielding, 29, who grew up in Mimili, in the Anangu Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara Lands in South Australia. “I had a good set of pipes, I knew I had a lot of humour and that it was a good combination — it was just a matter of time when it was going to find a home.”

The eldest of nine siblings, he matured quickly and recalls a youth fraught with challenges but filled with joy. Even as a child, he was sensitive to the dualities of life — that it could be both happy and sad — finessing an emotional register that has become the hallmark of his music making. At 14, he moved to Adelaide and eventually auditioned for the shows “The Voice” and “The X Factor” before partnering with Michael Ross to form Electric Fields.

Together, they have won national awards and competed for Eurovision 2019 with their song “2000 and Whatever”. Each track is a mashup of electric soul and Indigenous storytelling, animated by Fielding’s rich, androgynous tone singing lyrics alternately in Pitjantjatjara, Yankunytjatjara and English. The two are 10 years and one day apart in age; Fielding believes their collaboration was kismet. “Michael is a brilliant human being, a musical genius,” he says. “He makes me feel comfortable and loved.”

Still, transitioning from the APY Lands, “where everything is still and not dominated by the clock or rules”, to Adelaide hasn’t been easy. “Western culture has a lot of rules and it just made it difficult to adjust,” he continues. “I’m still finding it hard, but I’m doing OK.”

A multidisciplinary artist, Fielding also lays bare the constellations of his emotions, memories and experiences in his artworks. His father is the contemporary artist Robert Fielding, and the younger Fielding has segued into visual arts, which he finds cathartic. His painting “Untitled” is part of the National Gallery of Victoria’s “Queer” exhibition (opening March 18, 2022).

“I cry a lot in my canvases every now and then, and I get angry in my canvases,” Fielding says. “All of my emotions are inside of anything I touch.” Which medium is more therapeutic? “I get the same satisfaction,” he says. “When I’m in the studio, I’m using a different type of brush, it’s my vocals and my tone.” On canvas, “it’s more of a physical thing, but I still leave the work the same as I do offstage”.

Speaking of being offstage — a consequence of recent lockdowns — it’s clear Fielding has missed his audience, whom he calls his “co-workers” and has a great fondness for. The crowd plays a critical and energising role in activating each song.

For now, though, there is a new single and the promise of a return to live performances. “I have a good feeling that it might be on its way back,” he says. “I think there’ll be a new energy at live shows —not in a way that I used to see and feel it, but I’m OK with that. As long as I see a face, I’m all good.”

A NOTE ON THE PHOTOGRAPHY: At the time T Australia commissioned this portfolio, much of the country was in lockdown. As such, our portrait photographer, Kelly Geddes, undertook T Australia’s very first remote shoot, via Facetime and Zoom. Geddes revelled in the challenge, using screenshots and photos of her computer screen to capture the scenes, the latter technique producing some of her favourite pictures. “They had a natural and raw quality to them,” she says. The files were sent to the darkroom service Blanco Negro, where they were hand-printed from a digital enlarger, toned in the darkroom as silver gelatin prints and then scanned for publication as black-and-white images. Each subject wears a T-shirt by the Australian label Nobody Denim; the same style appears in flat lay photographs throughout the portfolio. In these, the T-shirt serves as a “blank canvas”, altered by the subjects in a way that represents the legacy they hope to leave.

A version of this article appears in print in our fourth edition, Page 82 of T Australia with the headline:
“Tomorrow’s Heroes”
Order a copy | Subscribe

What does it take to earn a seat in the class of 2021’s most inspiring young women? Is it a climate strike that catalyses a global movement, as initiated by a teenage Greta Thunberg? Or a poem that makes the world pause, as only Amanda Gorman’s recitation of “The Hill We Climb” at President Biden’s swearing-in ceremony could do? For 21-year-old Macinley Butson, originally from Wollongong, New South Wales, it was a gift for the scientific.

“Science, for me, was always a hobby — investigation was one of my pastimes,” she says, matter-of-factly, as she explains how she found her calling at seven years old. When her parents refused to further indulge her obsession with sunglasses (her collection numbered 15 pairs), Butson, in second grade, developed her own. “I did heaps of research, looked at polarising sunglasses, what the best design was, how to let more light in,” she says. “I made this unattractive pair of sunglasses that had two layers, which were polarising lenses, and if you twisted one — it was connected by magnets — it would adjust the darkness depending on how bright it was outside.” Her vision clear, she set about conquering new horizons, tasking herself with an annual project ever since.

At 16, she created Smart Armour: a copper scale-mail armour used to shield the contralateral breast from excess radiation during breast cancer treatment. (The idea came to her in a day-dream while bored in class, as she pored over the ruins of ancient Rome.) Her inexperience proved a revelation, not a handicap. “I didn’t know what the industry standards were and so I wanted to go and find out for myself,” she says of testing different metals. Her discovery? Copper was 20 per cent more effective at the skin’s surface than standardised lead and could reduce radiation exposure to the untreated breast by up to 80 per cent.

A close friend’s passing from cancer shortly after reified her findings, marking an irrevocable inflection point in Butson’s approach to invention. “It showed me why I do what I do,” she says, noting that Smart Armour solidified her credentials and helped win her the title of 2018 NSW Young Australian of the Year. “It became so much more than just my passion and hobby. It became my way to improve people’s lives and really make a difference.”

After that, Butson’s goalposts shifted to helping developing communities access clean water. In 2019, her Sodis sticker, used to measure UV exposure for solar disinfection of water, won Butson the Stockholm Junior Water Prize, which was awarded by Crown Princess Victoria. Now in her third year of university, studying Materials Science and Engineering at the University of New South Wales, Butson is witness to the dearth of diversity in STEM subjects.

“I found a love for science when I was so young and didn’t have any of those ideals already,” she admits, noting that she was one of only two women in a class of 28 at her first engineering tutorial. “But I recognise there are many girls that that does make them think twice because they’re thinking, ‘I don’t want to be the only girl in the room.’” The same goes for First Nations and socio-economically under-privileged students. And Butson is determined to change the sector’s profile.

Communication is key. Having worked through a period of anxiety and panic attacks, Butson now seizes every speaking engagement, using them as an opportunity to connect with aspiring STEM students. Her not-for-profit, Passionately Curious (which borrows its name from the words of Albert Einstein, one of Butson’s heroes), provides equal access to children in primary and secondary education. “It’s at that school level that we’re already starting to divide students based on circumstances they have no input into,” she says. Passionately Curious gives them “opportunities that they might not otherwise have, with the hope they’ll develop a passion for STEM”.

Butson warns against underestimating youth. She says people her age possess a unique trinity of advantages: a fresh perspective, unbridled passion and a willingness to advocate loudly for causes they care about. “If you can take those aspects in a young person and nurture them,” she says, “that’s a real key to driving change.” She’s eyeing universities, schools and local councils for support. “Young people may have the ideas, the passion and the drive, but we do sometimes lack the skills to turn those ideas into realities,” she says. “That’s where professionals, industry, local community projects can really get young people on board, mentor them and give them the skills, help them with the frameworks and provide that shoulder to lean on to allow them to excel.” Who said youth was wasted on the young?

A NOTE ON THE PHOTOGRAPHY: At the time T Australia commissioned this portfolio, much of the country was in lockdown. As such, our portrait photographer, Kelly Geddes, undertook T Australia’s very first remote shoot, via Facetime and Zoom. Geddes revelled in the challenge, using screenshots and photos of her computer screen to capture the scenes, the latter technique producing some of her favourite pictures. “They had a natural and raw quality to them,” she says. The files were sent to the darkroom service Blanco Negro, where they were hand-printed from a digital enlarger, toned in the darkroom as silver gelatin prints and then scanned for publication as black-and-white images. Each subject wears a T-shirt by the Australian label Nobody Denim; the same style appears in flat lay photographs throughout the portfolio. In these, the T-shirt serves as a “blank canvas”, altered by the subjects in a way that represents the legacy they hope to leave.

“There are people who couldn’t possibly have dreamt of the privileges that I have as a trans person and actor,” says Zoe Terakes, 21, of navigating the trappings of success concomitant with shattering glass ceilings. Terakes, who identifies as non-binary transmasculine, says their story is part of a rich and chequered shared history, with today’s stars lighting a path that was forged by those who came before them.

“I’m very palatable. I am white, I am able-bodied and I am a trans person who can pass as anything,” Terakes continues. Even so, being cast alongside Nicole Kidman and Melissa McCarthy in Amazon Prime’s new drama “Nine Perfect Strangers” is an impressive feat for a seasoned actor, let alone one in the foot-hills of a star-bound track. “I had to pinch myself so many times because they’re my idols,” Terakes says of working with Kidman and McCarthy on the series, which was filmed in Byron Bay during the pandemic in 2020. “They’re so extraordinary to watch as actors and they work with such precision and dexterity, but also freedom and fluidity and looseness. It’s so exciting to watch.”

The dreamlike experience Terakes describes is far from the world the actor inhabited just five years ago, when their identity and passion were under wraps. Of acting, Terakes says, “I felt embarrassed that I wanted to because I didn’t see myself anywhere.” Seeing Angela Betzien’s play “The Hanging”, directed by Sarah Goodes, changed things for Terakes, precipitating roles in the ABC TV series “Janet King” and Australian productions of Arthur Miller’s “A View From the Bridge” and Lucas Hnath’s “A Doll’s House, Part 2”. “That was the moment,” Terakes remembers, when they realised, “I can’t pretend I don’t want to do it anymore.”

A series of comings out — both personal and professional — followed. At the age of 17, Terakes revealed they were gay. “I definitely felt a shift in the roles I was seen for,” they say. That includes the 2020 Australian film Terakes starred in, “Ellie & Abbie (And Ellie’s Dead Aunt)”, a high school rom-com about coming out. Two years later, at age 19, Terakes came out as trans, going against advice to hide their identity so as not to limit work. “It would be like not disclosing the colour of my skin,” says Terakes. “It’s just a part of me.” But the actor admits this second revelation was harder, with higher stakes. “When you come out as gay, everyone knows what it is,” Terakes reasons. “When you come out as non-binary or transmasculine, you have to explain your entire existence to people, which is exhausting.”

The television series “Wentworth”, in which Terakes plays Reb, a trans man jailed for a robbery that was to fund his top surgery, engendered a shift in Terakes. They finally felt secure in their skin. “I needed to play a character who had been feeling this way for years, so it was really a baptism by fire,” they say. “You’re thrown into the deep end of your gender, and I’d only been sitting with it for a year and a bit myself.”

Cutting their hair for the role gave outsiders a familiar “masculine” signifier and, more importantly, was a personal affirmation: the cut perfectly framed their epicene beauty. “There he is!” Terakes’ hair and makeup artist declared after the chop. “It was validating in a way that I’d never been validated on set before,” Terakes says. Their outside appearance had moved closer to what was inside.

When it comes to authentic trans storytelling, there has been progress in recent years (and Australians are blazing the trail), however, Terakes notes that these stories are still relatively rare. So, what do they make of the industry’s current talk of “diversity”, “inclusivity” and “representation”? “If you are having trans people, people of colour, differently abled people on your set, and the set is unsafe and people aren’t versed in pronouns and you don’t have hair and makeup and costume people who can work with said diverse performer, that’s pretty backwards,” Terakes explains.

The repercussions translate onscreen. “It’s really important to have roles where a person’s transness is at the centre of the story,” they continue. “But I would also like to play a person who happens to be trans, where their transness is neither here nor there, just as a person’s cisness is neither here nor there.” Casting people with lived experience is essential to this, they add. “People’s lives are on the line because people’s understanding of these people is on the line.”

Fortunately, Terakes has role models to turn to; they count fellow actors Kate Box and Marta Dusseldorp as confidantes. “I got so lucky that really young I landed in the pockets of some of the most extraordinary female actors,” Terakes says. “They felt like handlebars for me to hold onto because it’s such a big and scary industry.”

The filmmaker Wes Anderson and the showrunners Ryan Murphy and Joey Soloway are among the changemakers Terakes dreams of working with. It’s thanks to creators like them that we’re starting to see different faces in films and on television. “It’s not going to feel like it’s changing fast enough, but it’s absolutely changing,” Terakes says. “I am so grateful that I am coming up in a time where that change is happening.

A NOTE ON THE PHOTOGRAPHY: At the time T Australia commissioned this portfolio, much of the country was in lockdown. As such, our portrait photographer, Kelly Geddes, undertook T Australia’s very first remote shoot, via Facetime and Zoom. Geddes revelled in the challenge, using screenshots and photos of her computer screen to capture the scenes, the latter technique producing some of her favourite pictures. “They had a natural and raw quality to them,” she says. The files were sent to the darkroom service Blanco Negro, where they were hand-printed from a digital enlarger, toned in the darkroom as silver gelatin prints and then scanned for publication as black-and-white images. Each subject wears a T-shirt by the Australian label Nobody Denim; the same style appears in flat lay photographs throughout the portfolio. In these, the T-shirt serves as a “blank canvas”, altered by the subjects in a way that represents the legacy they hope to leave.

A version of this article appears in print in our fourth edition, Page 91 of T Australia with the headline:
“Tomorrow’s Heroes”
Order a copy | Subscribe