Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander readers are advised that this story contains the name of a person who has died.
Gaypalani Waṉambi from Yirrkala in Arnhem Land, and her monumental work Burwu, blossom (2025), is the winner of this year’s $100,000 Telstra Art Award.
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The news was announced this evening (Friday 8 August) on Larrikia Country at Darwin’s Museum and Art Gallery of the Northern Territory (MAGNT).
Waṉambi is the eldest daughter of the late Mr Waṉambi, a renowned artist who died in 2022. She assisted her father with his work as she was growing up, including grinding his pigments and other tasks, and her own practice received his blessing prior to his sudden death.
Gaypalani Waṉambi’s award-winning piece – about Wuyal the Ancestral honey hunter, an important Ancestor of the Marrakulu clan – is etched out of spray-painted metal. An assemblage of road signs forms the canvas for the work, referencing Gaypalani’s father’s practice: Wukun Waṉambi was a member of the Found group of artists who engraved recycled road signs.
After her father’s passing, cultural protocol required her to avoid using his designs. Instead, Gaypalani began to create artwork from the epic song poetry relating to the journeys of Wuyal, the first man to look for a homeland for the Marrakulu people.
The 2025 Telstra NATSIAA judging panel, which includes Stephen Gilchrist, Gail Mabo and Brian Martin, described Burwu, blossom as ‘an exceptional work that visually and materially explores different relationships to and understandings of Country’.
Their joint statement continued: ‘Presenting two worlds with two sides, the epic Ancestral journeys of Wuyal are delicately engraved onto the silvery surfaces of discarded road signs. Each time the viewer moves, the work responds accordingly, revealing and concealing the undulations and intangible lifeforces of Country.
‘Each jewel-like panel shimmers with exquisitely rendered designs that are deeply anchored to Yolŋu philosophies. Despite its scale and its composite parts, there is a visual cohesion to the work that has been ambitiously, intentionally and expertly assembled.’
Exploring Gaypalani Waṉambi’s art practice
After Gaypalani Waṉambi speaks about her work in Yolŋu Matha at a MAGNT media preview on Thursday 7 August, her sister Dhukumul then describes Gaypalani’s practice in English.
‘My sister does most of her artworks on barks,’ says Dhukumul Waṉambi. ‘And with these, the sign boards, finding sign boards are actually not that easy because we have to go out bush to look for something that’s metal and yeah, that’s old and rusty. So we go out on the highways, the Arnhem Highway or just in the town, looking for one of these.
‘And then when we find them, we go back home [and] we sort of, like, make it smooth, spray it with some [black] spray paint … and then we do the honeys [bees] and maybe the flowers of the stringybark trees … with a little skinny drill… It can take up to three, four days to finish. She taught me how to do these too, so I can help her. And then we also taught my niece, her daughter.’
The Director of MAGNT, Adam Worrall, also spoke at Thursday’s media preview, saying: ‘Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander art is a vital part of the social and cultural life of Australia. The Telstra National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Awards is the longest running and most prestigious Indigenous art award in this country, and has nurtured and celebrated the richness and diversity of contemporary Indigenous art for over 40 years.
‘The Telstra NATSIAA provides a platform for Indigenous artists from across Australia to present their art to national and international audiences and to share their stories of culture, history, strength and resilience through their art.’
Speaking to Waṉambi’s winning work in a media statement, Worrall said: ‘We are delighted to celebrate Gaypalani Waṉambi as the recipient of the 2025 Telstra Art Award… In addition to celebrating Gaypalani’s exceptional achievement, I would like to extend my congratulations to the other category winners and to all 71 finalists who entered their works and shared their stories.
‘In 2025, we proudly highlight the significant participation of female artists, with 42 of this year’s artworks created by women. The artworks shared through Telstra NATSIAA provide inspiration that captivates audiences both near and afar and showcases the tremendous diversity and depth of
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander artistic and cultural expression found across Australia,’ he concluded.
Showcasing all 71 Telstra NATSIAA finalists in a major exhibition
Selected from 216 entries, the works of all 71 finalists in the 2025 Telstra NATSIAA are now showing at MAGNT, Darwin until 26 January 2026.
The exhibition’s guest curator, Kate ten Buuren, a Taungurung artist living in Melbourne, tells ArtsHub: ‘The 71 finalists have this incredible capacity to transport you and introduce you to their worlds in such remarkable ways, through all of the different mediums and materials that the artists are using to tell their stories – some works on a small scale and an intimate scale, and others that really envelop you in a large scale.
‘I think there’s an incredible diversity of works within the exhibition that really speak to the diversity of contemporary Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander arts and cultural practice.’
Asked to describe the experience of curating the exhibition, ten Buuren, says: ‘A big part of the role as the curator is sitting with the works and spending time with each work, learning about the story and pulling out those common threads.
‘I think there are so many similarities that connect us as First Peoples from across this continent, you know, and stories that connect all of us – and then there are so many differences as well,’ she continues.
‘And so being able to spend time learning more about the works, pulling out those themes of connectivity meant … I’ve been able to draw on and place things together that have that beautiful dialogue with one another … [such as] weaving practices from New South Wales near weaving practices from up here in the Northern Territory. It’s beautiful to be able to see the works and experience the works as they sit with one another in the space,’ ten Buuren explains.
2025 Telstra NATSIAA finalists Naomi Hobson and Jahkarli Felicitas Romanis speak to their award-winning artworks
Other 2025 Telstra NATSIAA winners include Iluwanti Ken, who receives this year’s $15,000 Telstra General Painting Award for her piece Walawuru Tjurkpa (Eagle story); Owen Yalandja, the winner of the $15,000 Wandjuk Marika Memorial 3D Award (sponsored by Telstra); Lucy Yarawanga, who receives this year’s $15,000 Telstra Bark Painting Award; Sonia Gurrpulan Guyula, winner of the $15,000 Telstra Emerging Artist Award, and Naomi Hobson, the recipient of the $15,000 Telstra Work on Paper Award for a striking photograph of her 16 year old cousin Dallas, in Present & Beyond (2024).
Hobson says the photograph, depicting the Cape York Peninsula’s Coen River, where she lives, is about ‘the love I have for my people, and [also] the care. Also, knowing the history of photographs that were taken before of my old people, and how it wasn’t [presented] in a way that we would have liked … our stories to be told, so it’s [both] a response of the history of photographs before and also dealing with young people today.
‘It’s about knowing that there is love and respect for them in the community and for them to be themselves, really, to embrace their identity and where they come from.’
Another of the award winners, Jahkarli Felicitas Romanis, who receives the $15,000 Telstra Multimedia Award for works referencing Google Earth’s view of her Country, says her pieces grew out of the lockdowns of 2020.
‘I was in the middle of doing my honours degree and had plans to travel to Pitta Pitta Country [in North-West Queensland] to make work. Obviously, that wasn’t possible because of the pandemic, and so I was thinking about alternative ways of connecting to Country and making work without having my feet on the ground, and really that was the beginning of these works … A lot of my practice is based in photography and in archives, so for me, it felt kind of natural to, I suppose, go towards Google Earth, because there are images of Country on there,’ Romanis explains.
Simultaneously, the award-winning 2025 works, Pitta Pitta (Extracted) and Pitta Pitta (Google’s Gaze) are recent extensions of her ongoing visual arts practice, she tells ArtsHub.
‘I think my practice has always been a vehicle for connecting to Country and connecting to place. I grew up in Torquay on Wathaurong Country, so my connection to Country has always been sort of defined by distance.’
The 2025 Telstra National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art Awards Finalists exhibition is now showing at MAGNT, Darwin until 26 January 2026.
Disclaimer: Richard Watts has been paid by Darwin Festival to visit the Northern Territory in order to run review-writing workshops for local writers. He has not been paid by the Festival to attend or write about the Telstra NATSIAA 2025.
