Pretoria East is not the first place most people think to look for street art. The city’s eastern suburbs are better known for leafy streets, restaurant precincts, and shopping centres than walls covered in paint. Look properly, though, and a different picture begins to emerge.
A three-storey rhino watches over a student residence in Lynnwood Glen. A brightly coloured baker welcomes visitors to a cakery in Maroelana. Bronze animals occupy the walkways between Hazelwood’s restaurants, while monumental human figures interrupt the polished architecture of Menlyn Maine.
This is not an underground graffiti scene in the traditional sense. Much of the art is commissioned, carefully placed, and connected to the businesses or buildings around it. That does not make it less interesting. In several cases, the artist has used an ordinary commercial wall to create something that changes how the whole space feels.
Hazelwood is the best place to start, but the trail stretches into Lynnwood, Menlyn, and nearby Hatfield once you know where to look.
Public Art in Hazelwood
Hazelwood has the strongest concentration of public-facing art in Pretoria East. The Old East Precinct has become one of the city’s busiest food and lifestyle destinations, but its visual appeal is not limited to restaurant terraces and good-looking storefronts. Murals, sculptures, and smaller decorative works are built into the experience of moving between The Village, Village Walk, and The Club.
You could visit purely for breakfast and still come across several pieces without actively searching. That accidental quality is part of what makes the precinct work. The art does not sit apart from daily life. It appears beside coffee shops, across restaurant walls, and along the pedestrian routes people already use.
The Village Community Mural
The large mural covering a corner façade at The Village is the precinct’s most obvious burst of colour. A stylised female figure sits at the centre of the composition, surrounded by blocks of yellow, pink, blue, and purple that make the building difficult to pass without looking twice.
The design came from Layla Fouché, then a Grade 10 learner at Pretoria High School for Girls. Her artwork won a community competition that received more than 3,200 submissions. Dulux South Africa and colour expert Palesa Ramaisa subsequently helped translate the design onto the building, using more than 125 litres of paint over four weeks.
The wall previously carried a set of angel wings that had become a familiar photographic backdrop. Rather than simply repainting them, the precinct used the upgrade to give a young Pretoria artist a much larger canvas. The result still functions as a selfie spot, but there is a real local story behind the colour.
Where: The Village, 16th Street, Hazelwood
Best for: Bold colour, portraits, and an easy starting point for the route
Artist: Designed by Layla Fouché and produced with Dulux South Africa
Bakehouse’s Coffee Mural
Further into The Village, the mural wrapping around Bakehouse feels entirely at home beside the smell of coffee and the morning crowd. Green dominates the design, with orange, white, and teal details depicting cups, café equipment, flowing steam, and a barista at work.
Pretoria artist Christopher MacClements created the work. He has treated the building as part of the composition, working around windows, corners, vents, and changes in the wall rather than placing one flat picture on an empty surface. The subject matter is connected directly to the café, but the work never feels like an oversized menu board. It has enough movement, character, and scale to stand on its own.
Where: Bakehouse, The Village, Hazelwood
Best for: Contemporary illustration and art that responds to architecture
Artist: Christopher MacClements
Aroma’s Toucan Mural
A large toucan marks the entrance to Aroma Coffee Roastery and has become another recognisable part of The Village. Its bright plumage and oversized scale give the entrance more personality than the average coffee-shop sign could manage.
This one sits closer to decorative branding than independent street art, but the distinction matters less when you are standing in front of it. It contributes to the precinct’s broader visual character and gives the Hazelwood route another easy photographic stop.
Where: Aroma Coffee Roastery, The Village
Best for: Playful animal imagery and an easy coffee stop
Artist: Not publicly confirmed
Angus Taylor’s Art at Village Walk and The Club
Hazelwood’s public art continues beyond its painted walls. Village Walk, the pedestrian route connecting The Village and The Club, was designed around courtyards, seating, restaurants, and art that people encounter as they move through the precinct.
The bronze rhinos by acclaimed Pretoria sculptor Angus Taylor are the clear standouts. Their textured surfaces and physical weight make them feel almost prehistoric against the clean lines of the surrounding development. They are grounded, imposing, and close enough to examine properly rather than view from across a gallery barrier.
Taylor’s presence in Hazelwood predates Village Walk. His documented 2018 work Dink aan die kleure van ons klippe was created for The Club and uses different types of unpainted stone. It suits an artist whose work regularly draws attention to earth, landscape, material, and the uneasy relationship between natural forms and built environments.
This is where Hazelwood’s art offering becomes more than a collection of attractive restaurant murals. The sculpture gives the precinct weight and turns the walk between two retail nodes into something worth slowing down for.
Where: Village Walk and The Club, between Oaktree Avenue, Pinaster Avenue, and 18th Street
Best for: Monumental sculpture and tactile materials
Artist: Angus Taylor
Public Art in Maroelana
Maroelana sits directly beside Hazelwood and often gets folded into the same lifestyle conversation. It has fewer documented public works, but two particularly colourful murals make the short detour worthwhile.
Leona’s Cakery Murals
Leona’s Cakery has turned its exterior into a suitably theatrical welcome with two colourful murals positioned on either side of the venue’s entrance. Both depict stylised bakers surrounded by whisks, spoons, spatulas, leaves, and other playful details drawn from the world of baking. The first figure has short pink hair and holds a decorated cake against a warm orange background. Across the entrance, a second pink-haired figure presents another elaborate cake, framed by softer pink and blue tones. Together, the murals create a balanced composition across the façade rather than functioning as two unrelated pieces.
There is no attempt at understatement here, nor should there be. Leona’s is a place where visitors decorate cakes, attend creative workshops, and arrive expecting something more playful than an ordinary café visit. The murals tell you exactly what kind of world you are entering before you reach the door.
Where: 19 Maroelana Street, Maroelana
Best for: Character illustration, colourful photographs, and pairing art with cake
Artist: Not publicly confirmed
Public Art at the University of Pretoria and in Hatfield
Hatfield brings together one of Pretoria’s strongest collections of outdoor sculpture. Across the University of Pretoria campus and nearby community spaces, artworks appear beside libraries, gardens, walkways, and busy city streets.
The Art Beyond Walls Sculpture Route
The University of Pretoria’s Hatfield campus contains one of the city’s most substantial outdoor sculpture collections. The Art Beyond Walls route brings together more than 29 works displayed among the campus gardens, historical buildings, and pedestrian spaces.
Artists represented include Edoardo Villa, Guy du Toit, Anton Smit, Angus Taylor, Isaac Seoka, Berco Wilsenach, Zoltan Borbereki, and Willem de Sanderes Hendrikz. Visitors can choose between a wheelchair-friendly route taking approximately 30 minutes and a longer walk of roughly 90 minutes.
One of the route’s most interactive landmarks is the RMB THINK Bench between the Merensky Library and Student Centre. The 13-metre, ten-ton concrete work was designed by Louis Olivier and his team from Wrkhorse Bronze Foundry. Assistant artists Allen Laing and Nkhensani Rihlampfu were mentored during its creation. From one position, the bench spells out the word “THINK”. Move around it, and the letters dissolve into life-sized figures captured in different thinking poses. It is also genuinely functional, with room for more than 20 people to sit.
Unlike a formal gallery visit, the route allows you to encounter the sculptures within the daily movement of the campus. Works appear beside paths, lawns, libraries, and lecture buildings, turning an ordinary walk through UP into something closer to an open-air exhibition.
The campus operates controlled access, so outside visitors should bring identification and confirm whether a visitor’s pass, advance booking, or guided tour is required.
Where: University of Pretoria, Hatfield campus
Best for: A concentrated introduction to South African sculpture
Angus Taylor’s Sculptures at Moja Gabedi
Moja Gabedi occupies a former dumping ground on Festival Street that the University of Pretoria transformed into a community garden and engagement space. Among the vegetable beds, canals, therapy facilities, and gathering areas are two substantial sculptures created by Angus Taylor with help from UP students and members of the surrounding community.
Both works depict the same young man but use very different materials. One is constructed from rock, while the other was formed from compacted soil and grass. The materials carry much of the meaning. Neither has conventional commercial value, and both connect the human figure directly to the ground on which the community project was built.
The setting gives the sculptures a context that a polished retail precinct cannot provide. They stand within a space reclaimed from neglect and shaped through collective work, making participation part of the story rather than an incidental detail.
Moja Gabedi remains an active community project, so access should be confirmed with the university before visiting.
Where: Festival Street, near the University of Pretoria’s Hatfield campus
Artist: Angus Taylor, working with students and community members
Best for: Community-created sculpture, unusual materials, and socially engaged public art
Public Art in and Around Lynnwood
The wider Lynnwood area contains two very different examples of contemporary public art. A conservation mural rises across a student residence in Lynnwood Glen, while animal sculptures bring an unexpected sense of humour to a lifestyle precinct in Lynnwood Manor.
The WWF Rhino Mural at Parq City
A three-storey rhino occupies the exterior of Parq City Apartments, a residential development in Lynnwood Glen offering student accommodation near Varsity College. Christopher MacClements created the approximately 70-square-metre mural with WWF South Africa. The scale does much of the initial work: you notice the animal before you understand why it is there. Look longer, and the piece shifts from a dramatic wildlife image into something more urgent: a reminder that one of South Africa’s most recognisable species remains under pressure.
The mural is part of a wider series MacClements created for Parq's student residences. The project began as four works and has since expanded to five murals across Pretoria. Other documented locations include Parq Lite near the University of Pretoria and a Parq residence close to Loftus. These remain operating residential properties rather than formal art attractions. View the mural from a suitable public position, stay clear of entrances, and do not enter controlled areas for photographs.
Where: Parq City Apartments, Lynnwood Glen
Artist: Christopher MacClements, in partnership with WWF South Africa
Best for: Wildlife imagery, conservation themes, and imposing mural scale