Telstra National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art Awards 2025

Michael Reid Sydney + Berlin is thrilled to announce that Gaypalani Wanambi has been named the recipient of the 2025 Telstra Art Award – the highest honour bestowed by the most prestigious, longest-running awards program dedicated to Australian First Nations art: the Telstra National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art Awards (NATSIAA).

At this year’s official awards ceremony at the Museum and Art Gallery of the Northern Territory (MAGNT) on Larrakia Country (Darwin), the Yolŋu artist received the program’s ultimate accolade for her monumental etched-metal work Burwu, blossom, 2025, taking home the top prize of $100,000. Selected from works by more than 70 finalists and 216 entrants, her prize-winning piece is now set to enter the permanent collection of one of the country’s most important public institutions. We extend our warmest congratulations to Gaypalani Wanambi on her extraordinary achievement – a major milestone in her career and a powerful affirmation of her position at the forefront of Australian contemporary art.

“This is an exceptional work that visually and materially explores different relationships to and understandings of Country,” note the NATSIAA judges of Wanambi’s award-winning piece. “Each jewel-like panel shimmers with exquisitely rendered designs that are deeply anchored to Yolŋu philosophies. Despite its scale and composite parts, there is a visual cohesion to the work that has been ambitiously, intentionally and expertly assembled.”

The eldest daughter of renowned artist Wukun Wanambi (1962–2022), Wanambi works from the Buku-Larrnggay Mulka Art Centre in Yirrkala, Northeast Arnhem Land. She is the pre-eminent female practitioner within the Found Movement, in which metal roadsigns salvaged on Country are dazzlingly reimagined as raw material for spectacular, shimmering works of art.

Wanambi is joined in this year’s Telstra NATSIAA winners’ circle by Kuninjku artist Owen Yalandja, who received the 2025 Wandjuk Marika Memorial 3D Award (sponsored by Telstra) and a prize of $15,000 for his work Ngalkodjek Yawkyawk, 2025. Yalandja is currently exhibiting alongside Wanambi in the 2025 Telstra NATSIAA exhibition, which continues at MAGNT until January 2026.

“Owen Yalandja’s meticulously crafted sculptural work shows an artist at the height of their powers,” note the NATSIAA judges. “Each element is carefully designed to manifest not only an Ancestral Being but a whole cultural universe. By utilising new materials and techniques to retell an ancient story, Yalandja’s work plays a vital role in maintaining, safeguarding, and invigorating cultural practices.”

Yalandja works at Maningrida Arts and Culture on Kunibídji country in Arnhem Land, Northern Territory, and he is joined in NATSIAA’s Class of 2025 by three fellow Maningrida artists: Kenan Namunjdja, former National Emerging Art Prize winner Obed Namirrkki, and this year’s winner of the Telstra Bark Painting Award at NATSIAA, Lucy Yarawanga. Their work can be acquired by special request below.

Gaypalani Wanambi and Owen Yalandja will soon follow up their NATSIAA triumphs with their first international forays, with both artists featuring in Michael Reid’s forthcoming group exhibition in Washington, D.C., The Stars Before Us All. Opening in the US capital’s Golden Triangle district this October, our expansive survey show coincides with the debut of the National Gallery of Victoria’s landmark touring program, The Stars We Do Not See: Australian Indigenous Art, which begins its North American tour at the National Gallery of Art.

Congratulations once again to Gaypalani Wanambi and Owen Yalandja. For all enquiries about their work, please email tobymeagher@michaelreid.com.au