The Museum and Art Gallery of the Northern Territory (MAGNT) has announced Marri Ngarr artist Ryan Presley as the winner of its annual AUD 100,000 (USD 71,000) Telstra Art Award—the most prestigious Australian accolade for First Nations creatives—which was presented on August 7 at the 43rd National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art Awards (NATSIAA) in Darwin.

Presley, who lives on Yugambeh Country in Logan City, received the top prize for his large-scale oil-on-polyester tableau, Our lifestyle of tranquillity undisturbed (2026), which appropriates the visual language of European Renaissance art to explore Australia’s colonial legacy and Indigenous resilience. In a statement, the artist described the piece as a “dreamscape that mediates the Orwellian slogan: ‘Who controls the past controls the future; who controls the present controls the past.’” Referencing The Annunciation (1546) by Italian Renaissance-Mannerist painter Domenico di Pace Beccafumi, Presley’s canvas features an Aboriginal male figure lounging beneath concrete arches, at the edge of a dark pool, accompanied by a hunting hound and a barn owl flying overhead. As a precariously positioned rifle threatens to fall into the water, a bushfire rages in the background. “I wanted to put in the anachronism, this mixing of timelines,” Presley told The Guardian, adding, “We see in Western artworks how they set out archetypes. . . . I really like that idea of translating [and] sort of redirecting and changing [that].”

In conversation with the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, artist Yhonnie Scarce—who was on this year’s jury panel—lauded the winning piece for its “multilayered iconography and that story of past, present, and . . . future.”   

Presley is one of seven winners at NATSIAA 2026, which included awards across other categories, such as general painting, bark painting, work on paper, and multimedia. The works of all 64 finalists are currently on view at MAGNT through January 24, 2027.

Ruby Lee is an editorial intern at ArtAsiaPacific.