Art Awards & Cultural Partnerships
We believe art shouldn’t be confined to white walls.
Strydom Graves Gallery operates as a mobile, digital, and collaborative platform — creating space wherever bold ideas live. Sometimes that space is a gallery. Sometimes it’s a city, an institution, a screen, or a conversation between worlds that don’t usually meet.
Our approach to awards and prizes isn’t about accumulation or prestige for its own sake. It’s about connection.
We work at the intersection of artists, cultural communities, and organisations with the resources to support them — translating between creative risk and institutional capacity. In other words: we help ideas move. We help value circulate. We help serious art find serious backing without losing its edge.
Think less patronage, more systems design.
Less sponsorship, more long-term cultural impact.
Through strategic partnerships, curated platforms, and targeted awards, we support artists whose work is rigorous, relevant, and capable of operating in complex contemporary contexts — socially, politically, and economically.
Selected Awards & Platforms
PORTRAIT: The National Portrait Prize
PORTRAIT: The National Portrait Prize is South Africa’s flagship celebration of contemporary portraiture. Established and managed by Strydom-Graves Gallery Pty Ltd, the Prize operates as an independent, public-interest cultural initiative.
Built to be the country’s most credible and impactful portrait award, the Prize champions artistic excellence, critical engagement, and cultural relevance, creating a national platform where portraiture is understood not merely as representation, but as a vital contemporary practice.
Curate Collective
Curate Collective is an independent curatorial platform established and managed by Strydom-Graves Gallery. It operates as a digital-first exhibition and commissioning space, designed to support artists working across disciplines and geographies.
Functioning as a living archive, exhibition site, and professional launchpad, Curate Collective enables sustained visibility, critical framing, and long-term cultural value — extending curatorial practice beyond the limitations of physical space.
The platform is built to foster meaningful connections between artists, institutions, collectors, and commissioning bodies, translating curatorial rigour into accessible, scalable cultural infrastructure.
Media Partnership
In partnership with South Africa ArtGuide, we support the long-term visibility of artists,
institutions, sponsors and collaborators — extending cultural reach, strengthening public engagement, and
creating meaningful value across the cultural ecosystem.
Visit South Africa ArtGuide