Yolngu Artist Gaypalani Wanambi Wins $100K Telstra Art Award

Gaypalani Wanambi, a Yolŋu artist from Yirrkala, Arnhem Land, has won the $100,000 Telstra Art Award at the 2025 National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art Awards (NATSIAA) for her monumental work "Burwu, blossom." The piece is a large-scale assemblage of 15 discarded metal road signs, intricately spray-painted to depict the ancestral honey hunter Wuyal's songline, reflecting both traditional knowledge and contemporary artistic techniques. This artwork honors her late father, Wukun Wanambi, a renowned artist who also used recycled road signs in his work and passed away in 2022. Cultural protocols required Gaypalani to avoid using her father's designs posthumously, leading her to focus on the epic song poetry of Wuyal instead. The judges praised the work for its exceptional exploration of relationships to Country, noting how the piece's shimmering surfaces reveal and conceal the intangible lifeforces of the land with movement. Wanambi's victory highlights a broader recognition of Indigenous women artists, as six of the seven category winners at the awards were women.