Sanlam Portrait Award Top 40

Sanlam celebrates top South African artists with a biennial competition, the only one of its kind in South Africa.
While South African art reflects the country’s social and political evolution, Sanlam’s passion and investment interest in art is also growing. This is why they established the Sanlam Portrait Award in partnership with Rust-en-Vrede art gallery.
The competition celebrates and showcases the best original portrait artwork in South Africa. It gives top local artists the opportunity to get invaluable exposure – the top 40 entries are displayed at an exhibition – and the winner walks away with R100 000.
To win this award is clearly not a simple matter. It requires skill, historical insight and also daring. This year there have been many such portraits and it’s gratifying to see the commitment of the broader visual art community to this competition growing. The next award in 2019 will undoubtedly present another challenge, which I’m sure both artists and audience are looking forward to.
The GFI Art Gallery is once again proud to be associated with Sanlam and Rust-en-Vrede Art gallery to bring you an exhibition of the Top 40 Artists.

The Creative Block

The Creative Block, administered by Spier Arts Trust invites professional artists to participate in this artist career development opportunity.
The project provides a fun platform for experimentation, with many emerging and established artists continuing to participate.

Regular hand-in days take place (Johannesburg, Cape Town, Port Elizabeth) at specified locations. At this time, artists receive blank blocks to transform in the media of their choice for presentation and critique at the next hand-in day.
Artists are encouraged to attend the hand-in day in person. Many are self-taught and it is through the curator’s individual critique – similar to master class feedback – that artists develop further.

When work is accepted by the curator, artists are paid immediately according to the number and size of blocks. The size and associated price of Creative Block artworks are set, regardless of artist tenure or medium. 

Each Creative Block carries a short artist biography on the back. This allows the artists to enjoy significant exposure as these artworks are displayed around the globe, travel to art fairs and are in the collections of private owners, patrons and corporate offices.

We invite you to see how a collection of Creative Blocks displayed together becomes a newly created, single “work” that honestly and sometimes brutally expresses contemporary South African society.

Visit Spier Arts Trust