Overview
- Ryan Presley won the $100,000 Telstra Art Award on Friday for his oil painting Our lifestyle of tranquillity undisturbed, which Presley said ties sacred spaces and chamber architecture to high rates of youth incarceration and landscape loss.
- The 1.8 by 1.5 metre painting borrows Renaissance chiaroscuro and classical composition to show a reclining Indigenous man beside a rifle and dog with a bushfire burning in the distance, linking art history to contemporary Australian realities.
- Seven winners were selected from 64 finalists and 221 entries, with six category prizes of $15,000 awarded to artists including Jenna Mayilema Lee, Colin Heenan‑Puruntatameri, Vanessa Inkamala, Barayuwa Munuŋgurr, Napuwarri Marawili and Guruwuy Murrinyina.
- Jenna Mayilema Lee won the Work on Paper Award for Taking back taken, six dillybags woven from maps she removed from the British Museum, a project she called 'a little act of defiance' that reclaims colonial archive material as cultural objects.
- All finalist works are on display at the Museum and Art Gallery of the Northern Territory in Darwin through 24 January 2027, and prize recipients say the funding will help sustain their art practices while judges praised the show’s technical skill and layered iconography.