A New, Refreshed Art Jakarta

SINGAPORE ART COLLECTORS would be familiar with Tom Tandio. He was the warm, well-liked regional director of Art Stage Singapore, before he quit the fair in Jan 2018 and reemerged 10 months later as fair director of Art Jakarta (AJ), the biggest in Indonesia.

Now for his first edition of AJ which opens on Aug 30, Mr Tandio has made some dramatic changes to the 11-year-old fair. He has moved it from Ritz Carlton Jakarta to Jakarta Convention Center where its much larger space of 9,000 square metres allows for bigger booths and more public art works.

The smallest booth now is around 25 square metres, double the size of the previous fair's smallest booths, while the aisles are now 4 metres wide compared to the previous 2.5 metres. Jakarta Convention Center also has ceiling heights of 9 metres, allowing the fair to be more ambitious in bringing large-scale works.