Yugambeh Country Logan City-based Marri Ngarr artist Ryan Presley has won the $100,000 non-acquisitive Telstra Art Award for Our lifestyle of tranquillity undisturbed, a work positioning the Western canon – particularly the Renaissance – as something locally inherited rather than distantly revered. With Domenico Beccafumi’s The Annunciation, c.1545–6, being a key reference, the work, in the artist’s words: “appears as a dreamscape that mediates the Orwellian slogan: ‘Who controls the past controls the future; who controls the present controls the past.’”
Ryan Presley, Our lifestyle of tranquillity undisturbed, 2026, oil paint on polyester, 183 × 152.7cm / Winner of the Telstra Art Award in the 2026 Telstra National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art Awards / Photograph: Katherine Travis / Courtesy the artist and Telstra National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art Awards
Sixty-four finalist works on show at Museum and Art Gallery of the Northern Territory until 24 January 2027.
