The winners of the 33rd National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art Awards have been announced.

Northern Territory artist Harold Joseph Thomas (Bundoo) has taken out the 2016 Telstra Art Award, the top prize at the 33rd Telstra National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island Art Award (NATSIAA). The award worth $50,000 was presented to him this evening at the Museum and Art Gallery of the Northern Territory (MAGNT) in Darwin.

Thomas’s work Tribal abduction draws on his personal experience as a member of the Stolen Generations, having been taken from his family as a young child. The painting was selected as the overall winner in Australia’s most prestigious Indigenous art prize from more than 240 entries and 75 finalists. Five other artists were also presented with awards in various categories.

Best known for his design of the Aboriginal flag in 1971, Thomas is a talented watercolour artist whose primary subject is the landscape and wildlife of the Top End. He described his NATSIAA winning work as depicting the “part destruction of an Aboriginal family. It’s a setting in outback Australia emphasising the human form entwined to tell the story of pathos and drama, especially for the abduction of children from...