Ryan Presley wins 2026 Telstra NATSIAA with painting exploring power, memory and the past
Marri Ngarr artist Ryan Presley has taken out Australia's richest Indigenous art prize, the Telstra National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art Awards (NATSIAA), with his oil painting 'Our lifestyle of tranquillity undisturbed 2026'.
The work invites audiences to reflect on who shapes history, and Presley's win earns him the $100,000 Telstra Art Award. His multidisciplinary practice spans painting, sculpture, installation, video, and writing, and his work is described as interrogating the legacies of settler-colonialism while foregrounding Indigenous autonomy.
The judging panel praised Presley's painting for successfully bringing together diverse cultural, cross-cultural, and art history references, holding the viewer in affective contemplation about the past, present, and future. The Museum and Art Gallery of the Northern Territory director, Adam Worrall, said the winning work presented a recomposed view of the past through references to Renaissance painting, and praised its technical precision.