SYDNEY.- Yolŋu artist Gaypalani Waṉambi has won the Wynne Prize 2026 and $50,000 for her etching on metal, The Waṉambi tree, depicting Wuyal, an important ancestor of the Marrakulu clan.

Waṉambi’s work was selected from 773 entries for the Wynne Prize in 2026 and is one of 52 finalists on display at the Art Gallery.

A first-time Wynne finalist, Gaypalani Waṉambi’s large-scale double-sided work details the artist’s songlines of the Marakulu clan and the ancestral honey hunter, Wuyal, with intricate markings of the life cycle of bees, honey and stringybark blossom found in her homeland in the Northern Territory.

After receiving the news that she had won the Wynne Prize 2026, Waṉambi said: ‘My father was a great artist and I learnt by his side. He made bark paintings, video and metal. He passed away too young and we miss him. We are descended from the honey spirit Wuyal. He cut the tree at Gurka’wuy and the honey flowed to the sea.’

Speaking about the work, Waṉambi said: ‘Wuyal was the first man to look for a homeland for the Marrakulu people. He began a journey from Ŋilipitji through Gurka’wuy, travelling via Yuḏuyuḏu to Cape Shield, up to Trial Bay and along the Goyder River until he came to Nhulun/Mt Saunders.

He felled the ancestral Waṉambi tree, causing a river of honey and thus founded the Marrakulu clan homeland at Gurka’wuy. The Marrakulu dance as bees in their ceremony, elbows extended, hands clutching stringybark leaves, which vibrate as wings.’

Waṉambi works from the Buku-Larrŋgay Mulka Art Centre in Yirrkala in Northeast Arnhem Land in the Northern Territory and she is the eldest daughter of the renowned artist Mr Waṉambi. Growing up in an artistic family, Waṉambi learnt to paint and etch with her father and brothers. She has now developed her own distinctive style and is the leading female practitioner of the Found movement, which sees artists repurpose discarded roadside materials into extraordinary works of art.

In 2025, Waṉambi was awarded the Telstra National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art Award (NATSIAA), the longest running and most prestigious Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander art award in the country.

The Wynne Prize is Australia’s oldest art prize and is awarded annually for ‘the best landscape painting of Australian scenery in oils or watercolours or for the best example of figure sculpture by Australian artists’.

Highly commended – Wynne Prize

This year, a highly commended honour was awarded to Blue Mountains artist Sanné Mestrom for her sculpture What the body knows. A two-time Wynne finalist, Mestrom was acknowledged for her bronze and fibreglass sculpture that the artist says is ‘both a maternal body and a sculptor’s body’ that ‘learns from the inside’.

Trustees' Watercolour Prize – Wynne Prize

Finalists in the Wynne Prize are also eligible for the Trustees’ Watercolour Prize valued at $5000. Melbourne artist Jennifer Mills has won the 2026 Trustees’ Watercolour Prize for her work ET home, which was a created in collaboration her adult son Darcy Luker.