Final Judges Results

Pretoria Art Museum, Pretoria. 03 September 2025

This afternoon, five merit award winners, a runner-up up as well as the overall winner for this year’s edition of SASOL New Signatures Visual Art Competition were announced through an opening ceremony presided over by Ms. Nozipho Mbatha, Group Brand Sponsorship Senior Manager for SASOL. SASOL New Signatures Visual Art Competition is sponsored by SASOL and Stuttaford Van Lines with the administrative support provided by the Pretoria Arts Association. Tammy Lee Baikie (Johannesburg), Rebecca Louise (Beck) Glass (Tshwane), Snelihle Asanda Maphumulo (Gqeberha), Vian Mervyn Roos (Pretoria) and Sarah Volker (Gqeberha) walked away with merit awards worth R 10 000.  While Thabo Treasure Mofokeng (Johannesburg) was announced as the runner-up, walking away with R 25 000, Juandré van Eck (Gqeberha) was confirmed as the overall winner for 2025.

As the overall winner, Van Eck receives R 100 000, which is envisaged to be invested towards the creation of a new body of work, which will see him return to the capital city in 2026 with a new body of work. It is important to reiterate what Professor Pfunzo Sidogi, the chairperson of the art competition, mentioned while issuing the awards. Some of the featured artists in the lineup of winners have entered the art competition before. Indeed, this holds true. Over the years, it has become quite evident that some of the artists have entered this art competition multiple times before emerging as winners, whether merit, runner-up or overall. As a reflection, Thabo Treasurer Mofokeng entered the SASOL New Signatures Visual Art Competition in 2022 with the painting entitled Thabo ya Nnete (True Joy), which was the year in which the Durban-born Mondli Augustine Mbhele was the overall winner with the work Iphasi nesiphesheli.

The following year wherein Nosiviwe Matikinca (Gqeberha) became the overall winner with her ceramic installation piece, Ndiziphiwe.  Mofokeng entered work again and was a finalist once more with the work titled Restoration. This year’s entry, which has scooped the runner-up award for him, is titled Still Standing. While it carries the lingua franca of Mofokeng’s visual elements, it is quite small in scale compared to the other pieces that have graced the competition thus far. Perhaps it is the message inherent in the modest work which resonated with the judges. The work shows Mofokeng’s paralysed neighbour, glad in a hoodie, in a wheelchair against a red background. In his artist statement, Mofokeng relates that though his neighbour was paralysed by a gunshot, he is courageous and resilient, and he sees his spirit as radiant like gold. The shadow of his neighbour behind the wheelchair is depicted standing as if that of an able-bodied person and painted in gold.

Lastly, last year, when Miné Kleynhans took the overall winner’s title with the work Meditations on Resentment, Jaundré van Eck was one of the merit award winners with the work Waters of Life, a ceramic work that compelled the viewer to move it up and down like a seesaw. The movement produced a whistle-flute-like sound as the viewer interacted with the piece. Cycles of the mind, it too a ceramic piece for which van Eck walks away with the overall winner’s price tag, retains the materiality and the interactive nature of van Eck’s artistic practice die die-hard followers of this visual art competition witnessed with Waters of Life last year. It is now left to our imaginations what possibilities the financial injection of this art competition will open for the Honours student from Gqeberha when his solo exhibition is unveiled at the Pretoria Art Museum in 2026.

Mmutle Arthur Kgokong