Artist Noli Rictor, possibly the youngest "first contact" Aboriginal person in Australia, has won the nation's most prestigious award for Indigenous art.
From Tjuntjuntjara in Western Australia, Rictor has won the $100,000 Telstra Art Award for his three-metre-high painting titled Kamanti.
"Winning has made me really happy, really proud... I painted this big painting here," the Pitjantjatjara man told reporters via a translator, at the Museum and Art Gallery of the Northern Territory in Darwin.
He wants to buy a new car with the winnings - the community of Tjuntjuntjara is so remote that it was a 25-hour drive to Alice Springs to catch a flight to Darwin for the awards ceremony on Friday.
Until the age of 21, Noli Rictor lived in Spinifex Country - the Great Victoria Desert - with only his immediate family, but they were found by relatives in 1986.
His family then moved to the settlement of Yakadunya, where other relatives had relocated 30 years earlier, after being displaced by British nuclear testing at Maralinga in the 1950s.
The winning painting shows the Kamanti rockhole in the Spinifex Lands that Rictor drank from as a young man.
It also tells the epic creation story of Wati Kutjara Tjukurpa - father and son water serpents who travelled through the landscape, shaping it as they went.
"Noli's painting vividly illustrates the country he was born into, reflecting the deep spiritual and cultural heritage that has shaped his life," the judges said in a statement.
After seeing the impact that painting stories such as these had as evidence for Native Title claims during the 1990s, Rictor took up painting in 2004.
After a long break he returned to his art in 2016 at Tjuntjuntjara, with the Spinifex Arts Project.
The Telstra National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art Awards have launched the careers of some of Australia's most significant Aboriginal artists.
Gallery curator Rebekah Raymond said a win can also be life changing in more practical ways with many remote artists using their prize money for four-wheel drives or boats.
"They can visit family, they can go to sorry business and they can go to country for cultural reasons or hunting," she told AAP.
The 2024 crop of 72 finalists chosen from 238 entries includes an increasing number that talk about extreme weather, Raymond said.
"Let's talk about fires and floods, so many communities have been impacted and we're seeing incredible truth telling works about the frontier wars," she said.
The $15,000 multimedia award went to first-time entrant Natalie Davey from Fitzroy Crossing in Western Australia, for her video and work-on-paper titled River Report.
It tells the story of unprecedented floods in January 2023, which inundated her house and saw the artist and many others evacuated.
"My entire community and lots around Fitzroy Crossing became climate change refugees," she told AAP.
The damage wrought by nuclear tests at Maralinga also inspired a ceramic piece by Pitjantjatjara artist Josina Pumani, who has won the Emerging Artist award.
"The black smoke affected my family a long time ago, my uncle got blind, my grandmother passed away," she said.
Among other winners, the painting award went to Lydia Balbal from Broome in Western Australia, for her artwork on a car bonnet titled Keeping up with the Balbals.
The award's finalists are on show at the gallery until January 27, 2025.
* AAP travelled with the assistance of NATSIAA organisers.
