‘First contact’ artist Noli Rictor wins $100,000 Telstra Art Award

An artist who was one of Australia’s last traditional hunter-gatherers has won the $100,000 Telstra Art Award, the nation’s most prestigious prize for Indigenous artists.

Indigenous artist Noli Rictor, winner of the 2024 Telstra Art Award, with his traditional creation painting, Kamanti. Picture: Philip Gostelow

An artist who was one of Australia’s last traditional hunter-gatherers – spearing bush tucker, going without clothes and having contact only with close family members – has won the $100,000 Telstra Art Award, the nation’s most prestigious prize for Indigenous artists.

Noli Rictor – who was thought to be 21 when he and his family were found by other relatives in 1986 in Western Australia’s Great Victoria Desert – said “I feel really happy and really proud’’ to have won the prize for his traditional creation painting, Kamanti.

Rictor’s prize is the most lucrative category in the 2024 Telstra National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art Awards, and the artist joked as he said through a translator: “When I heard how much the prize was worth, I was really surprised.’’

A Pitjantjatjara speaker from WA’s isolated Tjuntjuntjara community, Rictor may be the nation’s youngest “first contact” Indigenous person. Asked how old he is, he said: “Around 59. It’s all just a guess.’’

The elder paints most days at his community’s Spinifex Arts Project and in the afternoons he hunts kangaroo and bush turkeys, preferring to eat the kind of tucker he was raised on.

“Now I don’t use a spear, I use a rifle – bit easier,’’ the father of two who is clearly fond of a joke said.

As a young man, Rictor and his relatives swapped their nomadic life in the desert for the remote WA settlement of Yakadunya. There, they joined other Spinifex people who had been displaced from their ancestral homes in the 1950s by British nuclear testing at Maralinga.

Rictor does not talk about his early life. Informed sources said he would have found this transition “monumental”, even though he found respect in his new community for his knowledge of country and law.

His winning work Kamanti depicts the Two Men Creation story and traces the epic journey of father and son water serpents across the Spinifex Lands, where Rictor was born.

Telstra awards judges Putuparri Tom Lawford, Keith Munro and Katina Davidson said this painting reflected “Noli Rictor’s deep knowledge of his country’’ and was “truly majestic’’. They added: “His expert use of colour and composition creates shimmering fields, carving the Wati Kutjara Tjukurpa (Two Men Creation Line) into the layered landscape. At times the paint dances on the canvas’ surface … giving the work a truly mesmerising appeal.’’

Rictor began painting in 2004 and then had a long break because “I just got busy being a young fella in the desert’’. He returned to his art in 2016 after seeing his family members paint.

“I started again because I saw just how powerful painting is for people to really get the message out (about the importance of culture) even though they might not have great English,’’ he said.

Rictor travelled to Darwin’s Museum and Art Gallery of the Northern Territory for the awards’ announcement. The journey took 20 hours by road and plane, because the dirt roads near Tjuntjuntjara are flood-damaged.

The artist hoped to buy a car with the prize money to “help me go hunting, visit funerals and go to ceremonial business’’.

Rictor is the second Spinifex Lands artist to take the top Telstra award, after Timo Hogan won the prize in 2021. All the 2024 winners and finalists are on display at Darwin’s ­Museum and Art Gallery of the NT until late January.