Tag: exhibition

AN ANNUAL ARTISTIC HIGHLIGHT THE 2025 SASOL NEW SIGNATURES ON UNTIL NOVEMBER 2 AT PRETORIA ART MUSEUM

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There are less than two weeks left to explore the 2025 Sasol New Signatures Visual Arts Exhibition at the Pretoria Art Museum, which closes on November 2, 2025. The exhibition features works from all 103 finalists, including the top seven award-winners and is quite magnificent. Don’t miss it!

“This is a must-see exhibition. The standard of entries this year was exceptionally high, showcasing the newest creative voices leading the next wave of South African visual art,” said Cate Terblanche, Curator of the Sasol Art Collection.

The 2025 Sasol New Signatures Visual Arts Competition attracted more than 900 entries from across South Africa. Juandré van Eck (Gqeberha), an Honours student at Nelson Mandela University, was announced as the overall winner for 2025 for his interactive ceramic installation titled Cycles of the Mind. The work captivated judges with its acoustic and meditative presence, and its poetic interplay of breath, water, and voice. Van Eck received a cash prize of R100 000 and is already conceptualising his solo exhibition, which will be showcased at the Pretoria Art Museum in 2026.

The Runner-up Award and R25 000 went to Thabo Treasure Mofokeng (Johannesburg) for Still Standing, a painting inspired by resilience in the face of adversity

The five Merit Award winners, each receiving R10 000, are:

Tammy Lee Baikie (Johannesburg) – Book Worms (mixed media)

Rebecca Louise (Beck) Glass (Pretoria) – Sell–Fish (etching)

Snelihle Asanda Maphumulo (Gqeberha) – Ngaphansi kwesithunzi sakhe (Under His Shadow) (sheep hide on canvas)

Vian Mervyn Roos (Pretoria) – 2916 (cotton thread)

Sarah Volker (Gqeberha) – Taut, Tethered and Torn (ballet tights, stones, cement blocks)

“Sasol New Signatures continues to play a crucial role in discovering, nurturing, and showcasing the next generation of South African artists,” said Pfunzo Sidogi, Chairperson of Sasol New Signatures. “Each year, the competition provides an invaluable platform for emerging voices to share their perspectives, experiment boldly, and contribute meaningfully to the country’s vibrant visual arts landscape.”

Running concurrently with the New Signatures exhibition is the solo exhibition by Miné Kleynhans, winner of the 2024 Sasol New Signatures competition. Titled Augury After Autogogues, Kleynhans presents a speculative and satirical cosmos in which individual mystics, or “Autogogues,” use invented devices to divine meaning from the overload of media, relationships, and impressions. The works include Orbea kako-occultus, Abacus for Emotional Transactions II, State of Reproach, and Meditations on Resentment (her 2024 award-winning piece). Using a mix of wood, metal, 3D printing, resin, and found objects, Kleynhans constructs intricate instruments that blur the line between sincerity and satire. Through interaction, viewers are invited to ask: In a world saturated with information, how do we make sense of our own inner lives?

This year, the museum experience has been enhanced with QR codes placed beside each work, allowing visitors to access the artist statements for deeper insight into each creative process.

For audiences outside Pretoria or abroad, the entire exhibition,  including all finalists and winners, can be viewed through a virtual exhibition hosted on the Sasol New Signatures website. The digital gallery replicates the in-museum experience, ensuring that art lovers everywhere can engage with South Africa’s most exciting emerging talents.

With only two weeks remaining, now is the perfect time to visit in person or online and experience the freshest voices shaping the future of South African art. Don’t miss out on the fantastic art by our future masters of the local art world.

Exhibition Details

Venue: Pretoria Art Museum, corner Francis Baard & Wessels Streets, Arcadia Park, Pretoria
Dates: Until November  2, 2025
Museum Hours: Tuesday to Sunday, 10:00–17:00 (closed Mondays and public holidays)
Virtual Exhibition: www.sasolsignatures.co.za

For more information: www.sasolsignatures.co.za 

Or contact:

Nandi Hilliard from the Association of Arts Pretoria on 012 346 3100, 083 288 5117 or artspta@mweb.co.za.

Instagram: @sasolnewsignatures 

Social Media hashtag: #SasolNewSignatures

MAPULA CAPTURES REAL STORIES THROUGH THE EYE OF THE NEEDLE WITH VIBRANT EXUBERANCE

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A walkabout of the newly installed exhibition 2020 Through the Eye of a Needle: Remembering the Covid-19 Pandemic in 2025 curated by Julia Charlton, senior curator at WAM (Wits Art Museum), reminded everyone who was present how quickly we move on from events that change the world dramatically. DIANE DE BEER gives her impression of the way women rule the charity world:

 As Professor Brenda Schmahmann — South African art historian and current South African Research Chair in South African Art and Visual Culture (SARChI) at the University of Johannesburg’s Faculty of Art, Design and Architecture (FADA) — was in conversation with Julia, I was again reminded of women and the way they participate in the world where people are negatively impacted simply because of their circumstances, not because of anything they did wrong.

Julia (left) is the one who put the exhibition together, starting with some of the Mapula hangings which had previously been bought for WAM; Brenda (centre) has done research and written a book about the Mapula embroiderers as well as commissioned the first 14 Covid hangings on behalf of SARChI; and Janetje van der Merwe (left) is one of the founding members of the project (instigated by the Pretoria Soroptimists) and someone who is still involved with keeping the project going many decades on.

Living in Africa has many advantages, and for me, one of them is the constant reminder of how the real world functions. Privilege is usually something that is bestowed on you at birth and in a sense with the roll of the universal dice, it could just as well have been the other way.

But listening to these women as they share reflections and insights into the embroideries on exhibition, created by members of the Mapula Embroidery Project, a community art collective of women embroiderers based in the Winterveld and Hammanskraal, I again witnessed the part three women played and in the process changing the lives of many families in the Winterveld.
 
It’s as though the time since Covid passed in a flash, but this year marks five years since the World Health Organisation declared Covid-19 a global pandemic.

We all know how the disease has devastated the whole world. There was the astronomical  loss of life, terrible emotional strain, extreme social disruption and economic devastation. We were also reminded of the impact of so many things in personal lives: first year students who in the end never had the opportunity to experience campus life and live lectures; exacerbating the horror of the high number of deaths, no one could attend funerals which had to happen in isolation; and following that time, we’ve simply had to get on with recapturing some of the life we had lost.

This exhibition on the five year anniversary offers an opportunity to reflect on that time by considering an interactive exhibition of embroidered textiles dealing with Covid-19 and its impact on a community. Without the Mapula project, it would have been an even worse catastrophe for this community and other groups also part of the Mapula family.

When engaging with the exhibition it is clear that the women use these hangings to depict their own lives. One of the first things you notice in the Covid panels for example, are the people featured all wearing masks, a vivid reminder of a time we had to  isolate from others.

The hangings also serve as an historical document of a specific time. Whether it is the floods in Mozambique, the pandemic or even the tsunami in different parts of the world, these events are first captured by different artists in the group and then the individual women get sewing to create these artworks, hence the title Through the eye of the needle.

Other themes that pop up are food parcels during the pandemic, which were made up out of samp, rice and sugar, the absolute basics. Many of the cloths are also inspirational, not depicting what their lives are, but what they would like them to be.

What would we be as human beings without dreaming? “There’s always a focus on positive things,” noted Brenda

Janetje, who is involved with the embroiderers on almost a daily basis, explaining the logistics of keeping this group going. Because distances are sometimes huge due to the past, it takes planning and organizing to purchase the raw materials, get them delivered and establish pathways amongst the women to make it all work and come together.

In today’s hectic lives with family demands another obstacle, many women would have thrown their hands up in the air.

But these three are amazing examples of how women often work tirelessly to improve the lives of people who, but for the grace, might have been any of us.

Go and remind yourself in the coming months. Entrance is free and no booking is required.

It’s an enriching experience which the whole family can witness and enjoy. And along the way, a few lessons are imparted with quite a few fun interactive features, which will get everyone participating.

Museum hours: Tuesday – Saturday 10am to 4pm with the exhibition on until 13 September 2025.Physical address
University Corner, Corner Bertha (extension of Jan Smuts Avenue) and Jorissen Streets, Braamfontein, Johannesburg.
011 717 1365 (Week-days) and 011 717 3158 (Weekends)
E-mail: info.wam@wits.ac.za

FOR MARGARET NEL, MEMORIES ARE MADE OF THIS

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The brightly-coloured paintings in the latest exhibition by Pretorian artist MARGARET NEL will take viewers down memory lane as she showcases subjects that seem to reflect a different time. There is however much more to this than meets the eye she tells DIANE DE BEER

Margaret Nel on the journey of a painting: – “This work, titled Corner seat  was completed in 1976 and was sold to Mrs Dora Scott when it was exhibited in Bloemfontein. Dora Scott and her husband were very involved in the arts in the Free State and her son Fred Scott is a founding partner of Walker Scott Art Advisory. When Dora Scott died, some of her large collection of art works, including this one, were put on auction and it was  bought by the collector, art dealer  \and erstwhile gallery owner Warren Siebrits. I bumped into him at an art fair and he invited me to see the painting at his house.  I  asked him to let me know if he wanted to sell the work  at some stage and he later contacted me to say it was for sale. It  is a good example of my figurative work painted during the 1970’s. I have very few paintings from this period in my possession and I was very glad to be able to buy it to add to my personal collection. It is about 50 years old and quite frail.”

Before starting to write this story, I quickly glanced through an interview I had done a few years back with one of my favourite artists, Margaret Nel, when she held a major retrospective at the Pretoria Art Museum in conjunction with the Association of Arts Pretoria where her latest exhibition titled Aftermath opens on Saturday  May 10 running until the end of the month.

As she says so clearly in her Artist Statement, the theme that dominates her work from her earliest days hasn’t changed. It has always been about loss. She believes we have all witnessed and experienced loss in some form during our lives. “The debilitating effects of age and consequent loss of power and a voice and sense of self are perhaps the ultimate cruel and unexpected loss that all of humanity has to encounter eventually.”

Yet while her driving force hasn’t changed for this exhibition, her subject matter has. She has turned to objects rather than her usual figurative work, which has become more and more difficult to apply. “It’s easier to work with a theme and a new way of exploring the things I want to say,” she explains.

Allsorts 1

It is also a tough ask to find models willing to take the time, she says.

When listening to her talk about life and the harshness of loss, which the word almost unconsciously implies, I was surprised at my immediate reaction to her current work.

She is dealing mostly in things from her past, which means that many of us would find them familiar too: shiny pinwheels, old fashioned pincushions, Liquorice Allsorts, sweets in shiny wrappers in different stages of unwrapping or even the unfolded, now empty wrapper without the sweet, tinfoil containers, mechanical birds, wrapped flowers, colourful whistles, enamel bowls and a rather disconsolate plastic doll.

And even though I concede there is a certain melancholy, it also brings me great joy in a nostalgic kind of way. And who would not be tempted by her bright sunshine colours?

As important as the paintings themselves are, the names she gives each work also play a huge role and will point many in a certain direction. The enamel bowls for instance are titled Begging Bowls (see below). The name alone will encourage viewers to uncover their own stories. Alert is how she identifies the whistles, and it is as though you can immediately hear that shrill sound or visualize a school sports event.

All these objects were carefully selected by Margaret, who understands and is happy if everyone viewing the paintings gives them a different meaning. It’s not something she wishes to impose and if the work is simply seen as pretty pictures, which they certainly also are, she is fine with that.

For her, the objects in the individual works all play with the meanings of loss. And there certainly is a feeling of melancholy when you look at the exquisitely rendered paintings. Personally, it takes me back to childhood. I have always had a fascination with pinwheels, which because of their colours as well as their joyous twirling when the wind blows, have always held that hint of magic.

As someone who sews, I was immediately enchanted by the pincushions, the like of which I had never seen before, but Margaret explains : “I am not sure if the Chinese pincushions are made any more. Mine are antique and probably about 80 years old, the material is silk and the stuffing is some sort of organic material like grass. We regularly holidayed in  Lourenco Marques (now Maputo), when I was a child and the pincushions were bought at small Chinese curio shops. Nothing similar was available in post war South Africa.

Curio 111

In her world, when it comes to her peers, she says she feels like the last man standing, which also explains why loss at present conjures up such heartfelt emotions. There’s no one around who witnessed her childhood or even young adulthood, she says, and expresses envy as an only child for those of us who have siblings. There’s no one who can hold on with her and share her memories.

Talking about the process of painting, she declares that she often feels quite high when a painting is completed.She also does all her framing and with these paintings has changed from aluminium frames to wood which she can also paint and feels adds to the painting. She’s also in the habit of reworking old paintings and precisely that compulsion will be the subject of her next exhibition.

She will be looking at old work, all locked away in a storeroom, figurative work, which will be reworked.

Alert.

“I’m full of self-doubt,” she notes, and one can understand why. Her work is usually done in isolation with no one to encourage or discuss issues or share her thoughts about the work. Yet her beautiful home, the iconic round house close to the Union Buildings, is an interior masterpiece and glorious example of how exquisitely she curates her own life.

The house has been furnished magnificently to capture a very specific mood with, at the time of my visit, her exhibition paintings displayed on all the walls throughout the house. Because of the prolific windows, the backdrop is the sunny highveld skies while the furniture has an industrial feel with added warmth due to her cunning colour choices.

It is a pity that in today’s often hostile world, she has decided against a home exhibition because this is where Margaret so obviously feels at ease. And for the visitor it is an exciting extension of her creativity.

She knows she has to take her whole body of work into consideration, yet she’s constantly worrying about certain decisions and whether she has got it right. But still, she welcomes and encourages criticism and is sad that art criticism has all but vanished. She talks about very harsh criticism she received at a previous showing and feels that the writer opened new avenues for her. They probably simply confirmed something that had worried her and that set her off in a new direction.

Doll.

“I can’t promote myself,” she says and, because she is quite solitary, she finds it hard to put herself out there. Yet she is keen to have proper conversations about her art. “How else would I learn?” she wants to know.

What she believes though is that her experiences of life captured so stunningly in this body of work would be familiar to viewers. “Life is just full of loss,” she laments – and she’s right, yet there’s so much more captured in this magnificent display of her latest exhibition.

The exhibition will be complemented by a selection of ceramic vessels by Dale Lambert. Her delicate, decorative stoneware is characterised by minimal, bold forms and vibrant, primary colours.  The artist states: “My obsessive fascination with clay goes back to my early childhood and remains to this day.  I currently enjoy the thrill of working with porcelain, and the translucent pieces I create are an expression of my being.”

*Visit the exhibition between May 10 and 31.

Association of Arts Pretoria

173 Mackie Street

Tel:  012 346 3100 | artspta@mweb.co.za | www.artspta.co.za

Nieuw Muckleneuk, Pretoria