Singapore elevates status as SEA visual arts hub

SINGAPORE'S art market has come a long way in the past 10 to 15 years - with more exhibitions, art fairs and art spaces popping up, providing no shortage of opportunities for more people here to experience art. The contemporary South-east Asian art market in particular has been gradually developing only for the last two decades or so, but it is still widely considered an emerging market globally.

Contemporary art from that region of Asia is finding its place on the world stage and Singapore is currently galvanising itself to become a South-east Asian hub for artists of the region as it presents incredible South-east Asian talent across an assortment of museums, galleries and art fairs throughout the year. For instance, one of the most anticipated events on the international arts calendar is Singapore Art Week (SAW), an annual celebration of visual arts that draws over 100,000 visitors to art fairs such as Art Stage Singapore and Singapore Contemporary, as well as exhibitions, public art showcases, art talks, and indie events every year.

In addition to this, efforts to grow Singapore into a visual arts hub are also not limited to large-scale events such as SAW. Gillman Barracks, a visual arts cluster, which came to life in 2012, has been a key to the region's visual arts scene and is now celebrating its fifth anniversary this year. It was first set up with the goal of bringing world-class exhibitions to Singapore and now boasts 12 international and local galleries, as well as the Nanyang Technological University Centre of Contemporary Art (NTU CCA), that feature established and emerging international, regional and Singaporean artists.

As such, around 2010, when the Singapore government announced the opening of such a venue in Singapore, I did not want to miss the opportunity. By this point, having participated in art fairs held yearly, we had a substantial number of Singapore-based collectors, so I knew that Singapore would eventually become an important destination of interest for those collecting South and South-east Asian Art.

Even with a handful of Western galleries already operating in Singapore, I felt the project of Gillman Barracks - initiated and supported by the Economic Development Board and the National Arts Council - would give us an edge, so we opened Sundaram Tagore Singapore in 2012. In the relatively short time span that we have been operating here, we have seen Gillman Barracks change the artistic landscape of Singapore via its dedicated focus as a visual arts cluster. Singapore's art scene is a postmodern experiment that the government helped to jumpstart and we - as an individual gallery and the Gillman Barracks community in general - benefit from having this contemporary art cluster, a rich and vital resource that will ultimately draw more people in.

ROOM FOR DEVELOPMENT

Since its inception, a vast number of people have visited Gillman Barracks and it has already become a destination for international art in Singapore. Of course, there is room for development, with infrastructure, marketing and on-site amenities. But Rome was not built in a day and I predict that in the next five years, Gillman Barracks will mature and perhaps add more galleries and thus, more historical and intellectual exhibitions with depth.

In fact, more and more galleries are showing artists from the region, including our gallery. In the last few years we have mounted several major exhibitions focusing on emerging talents from Singapore, Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam and the Philippines - including, most recently, a solo show at our Chelsea gallery of work by the internationally acclaimed Filipino husband and wife team of Alfredo and Isabel Aquilizan, which generated a lot of excitement in New York. So there is definitely an appetite for South-east Asian art and the region of South-east Asia is especially well represented within Singapore.

I opened my first gallery in New York in 2000 with the idea of promoting intercultural exchange between Western and non-Western cultures. By 2007, I had two galleries in the US (in New York and Los Angeles) and was planning to expand in Asia, which we did in 2008 by opening a space in Hong Kong. This made us one of the first international galleries to open in Hong Kong and gave us the opportunity to establish relationships with many of the most important collectors in the city.

Traditionally, Western collectors have gravitated toward contemporary art, so there's been a greater span of time for them to develop their critical eye, while the Chinese and South-east Asian collectors, who have been collecting antiquities for years, developed a critical eye in that area of art. It is only in recent decades that the Asian market started directing its attention to the understanding and acquisition of contemporary art.

Singapore is also vigorously committed to creating artistic infrastructure that other Asian countries have not managed to build yet. The National Gallery Singapore was opened in 2015 to the tune of S$530 million invested in the refurbishment of two iconic heritage buildings - the former Supreme Court and the City Hall. Housing and featuring the largest public collection of modern art in Singapore and South-east Asia, the National Gallery aims to position Singapore as a regional and international hub for the visual arts. Recently, the Ministry of Culture, Community and Youth also announced a S$90 million investment in revamping the Singapore Art Museum (SAM), which is scheduled to be completed by 2021. Investing in world-class organisations such as the National Gallery and SAM, as well as the Singapore Biennale and the visual arts cluster at Gillman Barracks, has provided a strong cultural foundation and has reinforced Singapore's position as one of the major arts destinations in South-east Asia.

It is my hope that as more and more galleries, art fairs, auction houses and artistic institutions come together, more people will begin to realise the value of art and how it can enhance their lives.

THE ROAD AHEAD

Looking back from the first time I visited Singapore more than 20 years ago, the artistic landscape has matured dramatically - not only from the perspective of infrastructure, but there is a great deal of important work being created in Singapore by artists who use a variety of mediums. This work needs to be shown and fortunately we have the resources and ability to do so, both in our Singapore location and in our spaces in Hong Kong and New York (in Chelsea and on Madison Avenue).

There has been a noticeable change in the Singapore art market, which is why I continue to be optimistic about the future. We are also seeing that artists are being encouraged to take up art as a profession. This paradigm shift with the influence of globalisation and growth in artistic infrastructure is creating a new generation of artists.

I notice too that more people are talking about art here and this is something I did not see in the past. Add to that the influx of press coverage - more articles are being written about art and more television programmes and media seem to be covering arts-related news. A new audience is being created in the process and obviously this translates to a new breed of collectors who are looking at South-east Asian art and beyond. These collectors have started collecting art from across the globe and this is a very positive sign for Singapore since it is normally regarded as a hub for South-east Asian art. Now it is slowly becoming a global art destination.