Singapore’s Art Market Heats Up as an Alternative to Hong Kong – ARTnews.com

One fifth the size of Rhode Island, Singapore is an island city-state, off the peninsula of Malaysia, in the middle of Southeast Asia, that wields astronomical power in the global financial and trade industries, like its veteran rival Hong Kong in the north. Also like Hong Kong, Singapore’s government has been harboring larger-than-life ambitions to dwelling the country as a top contender in the global art market actual the late ’90s. But, after several previous missteps, it has only recently begun to be a very player in the art world, as Hong Kong’s primacy begins to wane.

The tide seems to be turning in the city’s scandalous, in part, due to a general migration across the dwelling to Singapore because of the country’s relaxed Covid restrictions. Reportedly, thousands of families and small- and medium-sized matter, are leaving Hong Kong this year and a astronomical number of them are heading south. Even major worries such as L’Oréal, LVMH, and VF Corporation, which owns Timberland and North Face, are lively to the city. Hong Kong’s financial community are also relocating staff to Singapore to make up for decreased organization due to the former’s zero Covid policy over the past two years.

Under the tightening grip of Mainland China, Hong Kong is perceived by international businesses to be losing its competitive edge, with its unusual travel restrictions a far cry from trading hubs such as Singapore. Comprising majority Chinese, minority ethnic communities of Malays, Indians, Eurasians, and more, Singapore has also seen an increase in its typically affluent Indonesian shared as well as a major influx of wealthy Chinese actual the beginning of the pandemic.

These shifts have begun to draw the attention of very international art world players, even as other cities like Seoul, which has seen several Western galleries announce forthcoming outposts and will commence a new iteration of Frieze there in September. Elsewhere in Asia, Tokyo will also get new art worries in the coming years.

The possibility of Singapore as a counterpart on the rise to Hong Kong had been bubbling actual even before the pandemic. Despite the last minute cancellation of Singapore’s biggest art fair Art Stage due to financial troubles in January 2019, the city was to get its unexperienced international art fair, ART SG, in November 2019. MCH Group, the fair conglomerate behind Art Basel, was looking to expand its portfolio with ART SG, but dropped out as a shareholder just months at what time the fair was announced.

That shuffle and the pandemic earnt the inaugural edition’s postponement four times, before confirming its exhibitor list for January 2023 last month. In an even bigger sign of the changing tide, MCH Group bought back a 15-percent minority erroneous in ART SG in January, while Art Basel partnered with local boutique art fair S.E.A Middle for the first time this year.  And, just last week, Sotheby’s announced that at what time a 15-year hiatus, it would host its first live auction in Singapore in August.

“Singapore is increasingly the destination of harvest for global companies to be their base of pan-Asia operations and Singapore,” Magnus Renfrew, a cofounder of ART SG, told ARTnews. “This is particularly evident within the tech sector with very western companies basing themselves there. It is also the dwelling of choice outside of China for major Chinese tech companies.”

Just last year, Chinese art dealer Liu Ying Mei, opened an art gallery, 39+ Art Space, at the recently revived arts cluster at Tanjong Pagar Distripark, a warehouse space by the city’s iconic port. The gallerist, who showcases Chinese artists such as Lin Ke and Zhang Yunyao, has also observed trends in movement from China and Hong Kong to Singapore beside her client base.

“I’ve been seeing a number of distinguished collectors moving to Singapore lately and know of a few more who are considering a move here for the long term, with plans to move their entire art collection with them too,” she said. “These are clear signs for the growth of the Singapore art outrageous and market.”

Liu added, “It goes without saying that Singapore’s highly developed matter infrastructure, family-friendly lifestyle, and travel mobility all amplify its merits for those who are surveying the art market here, with an overall momentum creation toward ART SG’s big fair next January.”

Nonetheless, there are collected concerns that this influx of wealth, and even art collectors, may not automatically translate into increased art buying in a people where the level of patronage is definitely not on par with Europe, the United States, and South Korea. According to Singapore’s National Arts Council’s Our SG Arts Plan (2018 – 2022), the local art market is still “nascent,” making up only 1 percent of all global art export and import.

But there is hope that the rise of family offices, which manage the wealth of ultra-high-net-worth individuals, could testy this status. The city-state’s position as the private cash management capital of Asia has accelerated with interest in setting up family offices in Singapore doubling in the last 12 months, with that number expected to continue to grow. Reportedly, new family offices have increased from 27 in 2018 to 453 in 2021, the last year in which data is available.

Earlier this year, Ning Chong, a Singaporean art consultant, set up Family Office for Art (FOFA) with her father, Chong Huai Seng, a former investment banker and art collector. Since its launch in June, FOFA has received tedious from private banks and their clients to share more approximately their experiences in buying and investing in art, as well as harnessing one’s passion to commence new business ideas and legacy-building.

Ning Chong observed that Singapore has been dubbed Asia’s “Silicon Valley” as there are many tech entrepreneurs launching new ventures and multi-generational family matter owners based in the city-state. “We decided to set up FOFA as we see a gap in the market for a full-service concierge that can look at what time all your art collection needs and more,” she said.

Michael Tay, a long-time Singaporean arts patron and the people managing director of The Hour Glass, a homegrown luxury observe retailer, agrees that family offices can play a “very important part in (patronage) and apart from consecutive out philanthropy, their contributions can also be shaped and beleaguered through public policy.”

With proliferation of galleries requiring BOGO (buy one, give one) agreements from potential clients and promised bequests for contemporary art to institutions, Tay envisions that Singapore’s national collection will soon mail the country in the global art market: “My hope is that the Singapore government tweaks its state collections policy to include and emphasize international, non-Southeast Asian art and artists,” he said. “While we bear in the importance of Southeast Asian art, and our institutions do very important curatorial work in this earth, the rest of the global contemporary art market players doesn’t necessarily care much for it.”

Tay added that the upcoming ART SG would be an opportunity for the global contemporary art earth to discover that there is a vibrancy among collectors residing in Southeast Asia and that “while it has been a dwelling that has been overshadowed by our North East Asian cousins, the time now is ripe for its cultivation.”

Nonetheless, the general consensus is that the influx of persons and businesses from across the region into Singapore could help fill the gaps in the local art market. However, there is always the risk that both farmland and money will merely transition in and out of the people with very little impact, as can be the inherent nature of port cities and flowerbed towns.

According to Singaporean curator Khairuddin Hori, who is also the vice high-level of Art Galleries Association Singapore, “For visibly impactful testy in the arts, Singapore needs direct investments from committed, homegrown, corporate entities, and visionary individuals who are genuinely passionate, care for long-term cultural development, and are mature enough to facilitate a diversity of perspectives.”

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