Art SG and Singapore Art Week 2024

Art SG’s second edition (19 – 21 January 2024, VIP Preview and Vernissage on 18 January), at the Sands Expo and Convention Centre, Marina Bay Sands, presented by founding and lead partner UBS, welcomed over 45,000 visitors. Held across four days, the fair featured a dynamic line up of 114 galleries from 33 countries and territories from around the world. It was divided into three sectors: GALLERIES, FOCUS and FUTURES and was accompanied by a curated program of daily talks, large-scale installations, films and moving images. It was a collaboration with Singapore Art Week, the city’s annual celebration of the visual arts.

The exhibitors list for the show was not as large as it was in the previous year, but the vibrant spirit of 2023 persisted. There was already a queue forming in front of the top floor entrance, just before it opened. Dealers were eager within the hall. Many galleries, including Lehmann Maupin and White Cube, reported sales by the early evening, according to information provided by Artsy.net at the time. The Thaddaeus Ropac gallery, for instance, reported that it sold a work by Anselm Kiefer for 1.1 million euros, or just less than $1.2 million. Additionally, over a dozen galleries reported selling pieces for less than $100,000 on the opening day of the exhibition. One art dealer noted that the lower price point contributed to a higher volume of sales than at the previous year's fair. Nevertheless, a number of galleries informed ARTnews that the buying speed remained different from other city fairs. Gallerist Daphne King-Yoo of Alisan Fine Arts in Hong Kong told ARTnews that people in Singapore usually take a little bit more time to decide on purchases. "We did the bulk of sales last year after the fair had closed," he continued.

Alongside the returning giants like Gagosian, White Cube and ShanghART there were 38 new galleries that featured carefully chosen collections of both recent and older art. Among the newcomers were Nadi Gallery, Taro Nasu, Sabrina Amrani, Bangkok Citycity, Asia Art Centre, Poligrafa Obra Grafica, and Kaikai Kiki Gallery.

Regretfully, compared to its inaugural edition last year, Art SG, Southeast Asia's international art market, saw a 29% decrease in the number of exhibitors in 2024. Prominent exhibitors such Sadie Coles HQ, Perrotin, Skarstedt, and Esther Schipper were among those that did not return. Magnus Renfrew, co-founder of the fair, noted during the press conference that Art SG's second edition continued to be held at a “respectable scale,” welcoming again a select group of top international galleries. He noted that roughly 68% of the exhibitors were from the Asia Pacific region, including Kukje (Seoul, Busan), Station (Melbourne, Sydney), and Tokyo's Maki. Of the exhibitors, a third were from Southeast Asia, including local galleries STPI and Art Seasons as well as SAC from Bangkok.

In order to generate interest and efforts that could pay off in January 2024, Art SG has organised events in Jakarta, Shanghai, Manila, Sydney, and Bangkok throughout the last eight months. The Art Assembly and Angus Montgomery Arts, the parent firms of Art SG, are hosting five other art fairs in the Asia Pacific region, including Taipei Dangdai, Sydney Contemporary, Tokyo Gendai, India Art Fair in New Delhi, and Photofairs Shanghai. As a result, Art SG has access to a broader range of clients. Additionally, progress has been made with the cultural institutions in the area. This year, Art SG is planning a VIP tour of the Thailand Biennale in Chiang Rai, which runs through April 30, in 2024.

Referring to the English-speaking Singapore’s capacity to unite the West and East as well as its comparatively secure location in the face of escalating geopolitical tensions between China and its neighbours. He declared: "Singapore is the only neutral territory left in Asia." He emphasised that these factors, in addition to its capacity to include several cultures into a mingling pot, make it a “compelling proposition”.

Collector Pierre Lorinet, located in Singapore, told Artsy.net: "I feel there is more energy, even if there are fewer galleries showing." Furthermore, he said: "Singapore was a little muted last year. Around the fair, not much was happening." This time around, a fantastic performance was given by all of the arts institutions, including the National Arts Council, National Gallery Singapore, and Singapore Art Museum. Everyone was attempting to contribute in some way to make this a unique week. "The week got off to a really good start, which really helped to show that Singapore was putting its best foot forward," added Magnus Renfrew, a co-founder of the Art SG fair. This marks the beginning of the scene's development as a whole.

A smaller, more focused fair was something that galleries were happy to promote. There was a view that the fair would benefit Singapore if it was more regionally focused. Simultaneously, there existed an alternative viewpoint of the fair. "Art SG happens immediately before Hong Kong's Art Basel,” said René Meile, a partner of Galerie Urs Meile, which has sites in Lucerne and Beijing and which chose to share a booth with local gallery STPI. He stated: "It doesn't make a lot of sense to have two fairs of a similar format with a similar reach two months apart." As the collectors in the region interact with their programming, a number of recent arrivals and alumni expressed their belief that Southeast Asia holds great promise. "As a gallery dedicated to working with artists from the global South, we really feel the importance of working within regions that exist on the periphery," Anthony Dawson, director of the Goodman Gallery in Cape Town, expressed his opinion.

This year's Art SG offerings included labour-intensive paintings, stitched paintings, and reflective depictions on the suffering caused by immigration, environment, social and political events. Paintings dominated the basement level of the Sands Expo and Convention Centre, where the more well-known artists were located, and traditional media took centre stage. Younger, more experimental artists filled first-floor galleries and positions. The two floors of the fair featured huge installations by five different artists. Strong, vibrant colours were the star of the show. The artworks were dominated by a wide variety of forms that captured the essence of life, took inspiration from nature, and communicated a sensual beauty through organic shapes. A stunning blend of proportion and symmetry created using a range of materials. Additionally, newsprint, clay, rubber, latex, aerial maps, books, and other materials were combined to construct a narrative in artworks that demonstrated how meaning can change according to the circumstances. The artwork on exhibit reflected the influence of daily and common contemporary events. The use of colour was changing from vivid portraits to flamboyant abstract works, becoming more intentional and expressive.

For the second year running, Art SG associate partner The Hour Glass continued its support of the fair with an exhibition of the work of its chosen artist. This year’s presentation, in collaboration with independent watch brand MB&F, featured seven of the 20 limited-edition kinetic sculptures from the Endless Movement series by Ukrainian artist duo Smith & Winken. Akin to the motions of watch complications, these kinetic sculptures explored the intersection between time and space, bringing the viewer into the fourth dimension.

Singapore Art Week (SAW), the largest visual arts festival in Southeast Asia, was a resounding success, hosted by the National Arts Council (NAC). In its twelfth year, Singapore Art Week encompassed over 150 activities throughout the city, one of which was the Art SG fair.

Blockbuster exhibitions were, of course, taking place during Singapore Art Week at the island's major art institutions. Tropical: Stories from Southeast Asia and Latin America, on display at the National Gallery Singapore (NGS), sought to explore how these regions utilised their colonial associations with the distant, sensual, exotic, unchanging, paradisical, and seasonless to reassert and reforge their own identities over the course of the twentieth century, all within the broad umbrella of the "tropical." Narratives about Indigenous peoples, opposition to capitalism and globalisation, and - possibly most importantly - the unique circumstances of both regions are all implied by the phrase. Highlights include paintings by Frida Kahlo, Diego Rivera, Paul Gaugin, and a series of works rife with irony: David Medalla's annotation of a Philippine newspaper archive, KumBum Banners (1972), which attempts to convey the truth about what was actually happening during the Marcos administration. Tropicália (1966–67/2003), a rendition of Hélio Oiticica's take on the trope of the tropical, was erected in Singapore's former City Hall Chamber amidst palm-fronded colonial capitals, complete with living plants and parrots. And Naeem Mohaiemen's remarkable three-channel film Two Meetings and a Funeral (2017), which chronicles the rise and fall of the Non-Aligned Movement and includes a speech given by Sinnathamby Rajaratnam, Singapore's then -foreign minister, to delegates at the movement's Fourth Summit in 1973, pointing out that the movement could not function as a unit unless it was reliant on technologies provided (and controlled) by aligned nations.

It was also important not to miss S.E.A. Focus, a boutique - curated fair/exhibition, which was organised this time by John Tung, a veteran of two Singapore Biennale editions (2016 and 2019) and a former curator at the Singapore Art Museum. S.E.A. Focus, which ran from January 20 to 28, was held at Tanjong Pagar Distripark, Singapore's newest arts hub. It included many of the most well-known galleries in the area, including Art Potters and FOST in Singapore, ROH in Jakarta, Bangkok CityCity, and Silverlens in Manila and New York. Together with Tung, ISA Art Gallery in Indonesia and Sàn Art in Vietnam also made their debuts. Other presenters at the event included artists Poklong Anading from the Philippines and Tan Zi Hao from Malaysia, as well as Thai filmmaker Apichatpong Weerasethakul. Screenings, talks, and panel discussions were also held. The event's theme was Southeast Asia's contemporary culture as it looked to the past, present, and neighbouring regions.

Other partnerships included the exhibition of Translations: Afro-Asian Poetics by The Institutum, which was held in Gillman Barracks and organised by Zoé Whitley, the curator of London's Chisenhale Gallery. The exhibition featured pieces by Do Ho Suh, Tuan Andrew Nguyen, and Singapore's 2024 representative at the largest art event in the world, Robert Zhao Renhui, as well as Sonia Boyce, who won the Golden Lion for representing Britain at the Venice Biennale 2022 edition. It was a bit of a look back and a look forward to the Venice Biennale.

Impressive shows were opened by a number of local collectors, including Pierre Lorinet and Malaysian collector Andreas Teoh, who occupied premises in the Gillman Barracks gallery district. They participated in ongoing projects that local private collectors were running in conjunction with the Art SG fair. The private foundation and the Gillman Barracks gallery hub hosted an exhibition of works from Pierre Lorinet's collection.