Cape Town’s HUB Gallery is currently hosting a two-month exhibition featuring 60 outstanding portraits selected from the finalists of the Portrait 100 Award 2025. The show opened on 30 August and runs until 29 October 2025, giving audiences the opportunity to experience a diverse range of contemporary portraiture.
The prestigious Portrait Award is a biennial national competition presented by Rust-en-Vrede Gallery in Durbanville. Launched in 2013, it has grown to become one of South Africa’s most significant platforms for representational art – art that portrays recognisable objects, figures or scenes from the real world – celebrating technical excellence, narrative depth and emotional power in the medium of portraiture.
The 100 best portraits are selected from the entries received, from which the Top 40, Top 5, Top 3 and overall winning portraits are chosen. The Top 40 portraits are exhibited at Rust-en-Vrede Gallery, while HUB Gallery supports the Portrait 100 Award exhibition by presenting the remaining 60 works. All are for sale to the public.
This year’s finalists were chosen by a panel of respected industry experts: Dr Dineke Orton, an art historian, researcher, and curator of the University of Johannesburg Art Gallery; artist and entrepreneur Thonton Kubeya; and journalist, art critic, and editor Sean O’Toole. The blind adjudication process ensured that works were judged purely on artistic merit, free from bias or name recognition.
Says HUB Gallery and Spier Arts Trust CEO Mirna Wessels, ‘For the second consecutive year, we are supporting the national Portrait Award. Portrait 100 is a significant platform that celebrates the strength and variety of South African contemporary portraiture, while giving art lovers an opportunity to engage with fresh talent and acquire these works.’
The exhibition opened with a private viewing on 30 August, and is now open to the public at HUB Gallery, located at historic Union House, 25 Commercial Street, Cape Town.