Ryan Presley is a Marri Ngarr artist born in Mparntwe/Alice Springs and based in Queensland, whose practice uses painting, watercolour, installation and conceptual strategies to examine power, colonial history and Indigenous sovereignty. His long-running Blood Money project reimagines Australian currency with First Nations leaders, activists and resistance figures, challenging the national histories embedded in economic symbols. More recent paintings draw on European art history, religious imagery and elaborate narrative scenes, relocating familiar visual traditions within contemporary Aboriginal experience.
Presley’s activity in 2026 is especially significant. His oil painting Our lifestyle of tranquillity undisturbed won the $100,000 Telstra Art Award at the National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art Awards in Darwin on 7 August. The work places an Indigenous protagonist inside a Renaissance-inspired setting and combines references to historical painting with questions of memory, autonomy and the continuing effects of colonial power. His representing gallery also documents recent exhibitions, including Daydreamer at Samstag Museum of Art and Inferno at Milani Gallery. Across these projects, Presley combines technical painting with a sustained critique of the systems through which history, value and authority are represented.