Art SG a turning point for Singapore market?

THE brand new art fair Art SG ended its VIP preview with some sterling numbers. The mega-galleries, such as David Zwirner and White Cube, sold over US$2.5 million worth of blue-chip art. Singapore galleries such as FOST and Yavuz sold more than half of the works they brought, although at more modest prices. The overall sentiment among participants was positive – even if some galleries out of the 164 galleries at the fair did not generate satisfactory sales.

Ursula Sullivan, co-founder of Australian gallery Sullivan+Strumpf, was kicking herself after the vernissage: “We sold almost everything in our booth by the end of the opening day. We wish we’d brought more works.” Singapore artist Dawn Ng, which the gallery represents, saw about 20 of her works snapped up by buyers mostly from Singapore, South-east Asia and mainland China.

Stephanie Fong, founder of FOST at Gillman Barracks, was similarly thrilled with her sales: “The vibe has been amazing. We sold more than half of our booth to buyers whom we’d never met. This is important for any gallery – meeting new clients, cultivating new relationships and expanding our collector base.”

Major sales

The vibe at Art SG was positively different from Art Stage, the previous Singapore art fair that debuted in 2011 and exited in 2019 amid founder Lorenzo Rudolf’s acrimonious claims that the Singapore art market was “stagnating” and “not viable”. 

The presence of the top international galleries – some of which had never participated in a Singapore art fair before – meant that the audience got to see art seldom displayed on the island. Works by the bluest of blue-chip artists, such as Alice Neel, Anselm Kiefer, James Turrell, Marcel Dzama and Neo Rauch, were on display at various galleries. 

Admittedly, the fair is not as big and buzzy as the region’s juggernaut Art Basel Hong Kong. Most galleries seem to have held back from bringing their most expensive works, keeping prices mostly in the six-figure range and under, giving the overall impression that they are testing the Singapore market for now.

The biggest sales include White Cube’s sale of a Kiefer painting titled Dein Goldenes Haar Margarete to an Indonesian collector for 1.2 million euros (S$1.7 million). Pace sold a stunning sensorial installation by Turrell titled Rama, Rectangular Glass for US$950,000. Gagosian sold two works by the recently-deceased artist Ashley Bickerton to Indonesian private museum Macan for an undisclosed sum. Xavier Hufkens sold a Zhang Enli painting for US$350,000.

Numbers offer relief

For long-time observers of the Singapore art market, the numbers offered some form of relief. When Singapore’s only high-end art fair Art Stage closed shop in 2019, founder Rudolf put the blame mostly on collectors, saying that there just wasn’t enough art-buying on the island to sustain its operations. 

Gillman Barracks, a contemporary art gallery cluster, opened to much fanfare in 2012. But by 2017, a third of its 17 galleries left citing poor sales. Singapore’s reputation as a nascent art market was badly damaged by these developments.

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Even Art SG had struggled to open: It was set to debut in 2019 but was postponed four times to 2023 due to management changes and the pandemic. However, the pandemic also saw many wealth managers and family offices moving to Singapore from Hong Kong and mainland China to avoid the problems engulfing them. Consequently, Art SG saw a doubling in the number of galleries that wanted to participate in the fair.

The long birthing process also meant that organiser The Art Assembly had more time to prepare the ground. Fair co-founder Magnus Renfrew and fair director Yang Shuyin had been spotted in various other fairs and social events over the past five years, talking to and persuading international art collectors to come to Art SG.

Their efforts have certainly borne fruit. Prominent international collectors such as Uli Sigg from Switzerland, Rajeeb Samdani from Bangladesh, Alain Servais from Belgium, Patrick Sun from Hong Kong and Oei Hong Djien from Indonedsia were among many that came to the fair. Respected curators such as Hans Ulrich Obrist, Fumio Nanjo and Apinan Poshyananda headlined various dialogues and discussions.  

Although it’s too soon to say whether Art SG is the critical factor that can transform Singapore into the art market hub it desperately wants to be, the mood for now is optimistic. Albert Lim, a long-time Singapore art collector and founder of the private gallery Primz Gallery, said: “I usually go to Hong Kong to find this kind of art buzz and excitement. But today I’m standing right here in my own country and experiencing the same kind of buzz. You can say I’m feeling proud to be Singaporean.”  

Art SG runs from now till Jan 15 at Marina Bay Sands.