News edition for 9 July 2026. Added to Nungya on 22 October 2026 as part of our retrospective news archive. Reporting reflects information available by the edition date.
What changes when an audience has controls in its hands? A work encountered through gameplay asks for a different kind of attention from a picture viewed across a room.
Cairns Indigenous Art Fair’s announcement introduces Inferno, an interactive digital work by Ryan Presley, for its 2026 program. Presented across three arcade-style stations at Tank 3, it brings a speculative game environment into the art fair.
The presentation sits within CIAF’s Reclamation & Regeneration program. Presley, born in Alice Springs and based in Brisbane, uses contemporary media as part of a broader artistic practice. The source describes the game’s themes and the environment players encounter; this preview does not claim to be a player’s review.
An arcade format can be familiar without making the work’s ideas simple. Its rules, images and the player’s actions all form part of what an audience may consider. People arriving for paintings or textiles have another medium to explore, while someone drawn by a game may find a new route into an artist’s practice.
Read the presenter’s description for the work’s own context. There is no need to make one digital artwork stand for every First Nations approach to technology. Its interest lies in a particular artist choosing this format and asking what an audience can do with it.
