The anticipation was palpable as members of the local arts media and a diverse group of South African artists from all around the country – flanked by their friends and family – gathered round for the Sasol New Signatures awards ceremony at the Pretoria Art Museum (Wed, Sep 3). Now in its 35th year, this is easily one of our favourite annual art events – and the 2025 edition did not disappoint. The works on display are a testament to the diversity and vibrancy of the country’s artists and makers, and have been beautifully curated for the final showcase.
There are prints, paintings, sculptures, and a great many textile works on display this year. Interestingly, much of what has been submitted has an interactive element – teasing out the idea that art is not something to be experienced in stasis, but actively engaged with. This echoes the approach of 2025 winner Miné Kleynhans, who presents her playful, imaginative solo Augury After Autogogues (a mouthful, we know) at the Pretoria Art Museum this year, cementing herself as a singular artist to watch.
900+ submissions, countrywide
The Sasol New Signatures visual arts competition is not only one of the most prestigious art awards in South Africa, it is also one of the most interesting. With submission points nationwide, and with the only qualifying factor being that the artist has not yet had a solo exhibition, the range of mediums, backgrounds and influences that emerge is staggering. By including regional drop-off points, Sasol New Signatures helps open the door for artists who are not located in the country's art centres.In 2025 there were 903 entries submitted for consideration. The logistics of orchestrating this are impressive, with no prohibition of large-scale sculpture or installation-based works. Nor is selecting the winners an easy task – not only because of the sheer mass of talent, but because measuring paintings, drawings, and prints up against textiles, ceramics, and installations (not to name any of the more unusual mediums) is a task we don't envy.
On the judging process, Pfunzo Sidogi, chairperson of the Sasol New Signatures visual arts competition, said, "It was an enormous privilege to engage with and listen to the greatest collection of art minds during the regional and final judging rounds. These esteemed judges, whose roles in the visual arts ecosystem range from practising artists and curators to academics, auctioneers, arts administrators, and gallerists, do not merely select or reject artworks for awards; their efforts as adjudicators are actively shaping the now and tomorrow of South African art practice."
The history of Sasol New Signatures is one of opportunity and platforming artistic voices, growing over the years into an important launching pad for professional careers in art. Notable past winners include Mohau Modisakeng, Patrick Rulore, Andrea du Plessis, and Mondli Mbhele. With that, get to know the artists behind 2025's winning works.
2025 Sasol New Signatures Winner, Juandré van Eck
Gqeberha-based artist Juandré van Eck is the overall winner of the 2025 Sasol New Signatures visual arts competition for his interactive ceramic piece, Cycles of the mind. An honours student at the Nelson Mandela University, Van Eck was a merit award winner in 2024 for his work Waters of life – a work we remember for its ingenuity.
With Cycles of the mind Van Eck turns his attention to breath, and shows a refinement in his output in little over a year. The piece features two whistles on either side, with the artist explaining, "one a cry of liberation and joy, the other a low, gentle echo of contemplation and unseen turmoil. Water, the essence of life, gives life to this artwork, offering it a voice through its gentle flow from one state to the next. It provides comfort and the promise that even in the darkest moment, hope can rise, a whisper becoming a triumphant cry of defiance." It is whimsical, evocative, and quite unlike anything we've encountered before. We hear the judges were unanimous in their decision.
Van Eck's creation shows a considered hand at work, as water and air flow from one side of the piece to the other, the whistles sound with a rhythmic pattern of breath being created. His use of ceramics is truly exciting to see, and partake in. "When people interact with my work," says Van Eck, "I hope it creates a calming environment that speaks to the inner child, allowing for a sense of play in a world that often feels overwhelming."
As the overall winner of the competition, Van Eck will receive a cash prize of R100 000 as well as the opportunity to host a solo at the Pretoria Art Museum in 2026.
Runner-up for 2025, Thabo Treasure Mofokeng
Another past merit winner, Thabo Treasure Mofokeng's painting Still Standing was announced as this year's runner-up, for which he will receive R25 000.
With his vivid painting, Mofokeng pays tribute to his neighbour who was shot and paralysed. The work radiates off the gallery walls, and the deep and contrasting reds draw you into the canvas. A Johannesburg-based artist, Mofokeng received his formal training at Artist Proof Studio. While he is comfortable in exploring other mediums and forms, he finds himself coming back to acrylics – and with Still Standing it is easy to see why.
His drive to keep on doing art is to inspire and remind those around him of their inherent value and beauty, describing his work as "a celebration of the human capacity for resilience, hope, and determination."
The five 2025 merit award winners
Tammy Lee Baikie's mixed-media work Book worms saw her being announced as one of the merit award winners. The work uses the wild harvesting of mopane warms to look at how certain frameworks of knowledge (scientific, for instance) are privileged over others (such as indigenous knowledge systems). Through cracked images and the words of Zimbabwean villagers on the drawer cover, Baikie's work disrupts the book, etching, and specimen collection as symbols of the Western scientific paradigm.
Pretoria-based artist Rebecca Louis (Beck) Glass wins the merit award for her Kafkaesque etching Sell – Fish. Set in a fish market, the figure is part human, part fish, and it explores the duality of being both the creator and the product in an artistic career. Glass says, "As artists, we are often required to 'sell' ourselves, navigating a world where personal identity and creative output become inseparably entangled."
Snelihle Asanda Maphumulo is one of two 2025 merit award winners from Gqeberha for her tactile piece Ngaphansi kwesithunzi sakhe (under His Shadow). This compelling work invites deep exploration. Embedded into layers and folds of hide, images are partially hidden, speaking to the imperfect process of remembering and tradition.
With just two colours, 2025 merit award winner Vian Mervyn Roos' textile work 2916 is deceptively simple. Made up of 2916 individually crafted tassels, it is a work focused on tactility and resists automated processes. As time goes on and viewers engage with the work the tassels will begin to fray and wear. Roos describes this as "a meditation on the fragility and resilience of the handmade in a digital age."
Last but not least is 2025 merit award winner, also from Gqeberha, Sarah Volker with Taut, tethered, and torn. The sculpture comprises ballet tights filled with stones, bricks, and cement blocks and looks at the tensions between a dancer's body and mind. Some of the tights tear while others stretch, with Volker considering the ways in which the body holds on to experiences.
Each merit award winner receives a cash prize of R10,000.
Experiential works rise to the fore
On the nature of submissions for this year's competition, Pfunzo Sidogi says, "More and more emerging artists are creating artworks that demand to be experienced beyond purely visual and cognitive dimensions. This is certainly the case with this year’s winning work. Van Eck’s ceramic sculpture invites viewers to touch, hold, and gently move the delicately manufactured object…"See the Sasol New Signatures 2025 winning exhibition
You can see Van Eck's winning installation together with runner-up Mofokeng, the five merit award winners, and more than 100 shortlisted entries at the Pretoria Art Museum. Alongside, 2024 winner Miné Kleynhans holds her first solo exhibition, Augury After Autogogues. Both of these exhibitions run until Sun, Nov 2, 2025.The Pretoria Art Museum is on the corner Francis Baard and Wessels Streets, Arcadia Park, Pretoria. Open Tue – Sun from 10:00 – 17:00.
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