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The international art market moves to the Indo-Pacific this week for the second edition of ART SG in Singapore (January 19-21, Marina Bay Sands Expo and Convention Centre). Coinciding with Singapore Art Week and notable museum show openings, the fair has generated a “step up of activity in town” this year, according to its co-founder Magnus Renfrew.
Support from the region’s individual collectors bolsters many events, including at the so-called Private Museum, which is in fact a hybrid non-profit charity founded by the real estate developer Daniel Teo and his daughter Rachel Teo in 2010. Shows here include works from 15 members of “Art Addicts Anonymous” — an informal WhatsApp group that has become a thriving collectors circle — and of art owned by Pierre Lorinet, a financier-turned-philanthropist who is a member of ART SG’s 26-person advisory group. Elsewhere, the British curator Zoé Whitley organises an exhibition of 100 artists from Africa and Asia at Gillman Barracks for The Institutum, founded by the international collector Andreas Teoh.
Renfrew notes the acceleration of money flowing into Singapore, including through its thriving biotech and tech sectors. This year’s edition of the fair is however nearly a third smaller than its inaugural edition — with about 110 galleries versus 160 in 2023 — which, Renfrew says, reflects that galleries are “having to make short-term, pragmatic decisions” in a softer market. But, he says, “given the wider context of the ascent of Singapore’s relevance geopolitically and geo-economically, ART SG has the potential to play a role in building a key cultural and art market hub over the coming years.”
Two Australians who forged their careers in London have moved back and will open a new gallery in Sydney on February 24. Tania Doropoulos, previously artistic director of Frieze London and Frieze Studios, and Matt Glenn, a former director at Sadie Coles gallery, have identified a “generational shift” among gallerists and collectors in Australia and believe that now is a good time to begin catering to the widening demand. The art market’s move towards Asia is among the dynamics helping to put Australia on the map, they say.
The gallery will be called “Palas”, to invoke a sense of palatial hospitality, and so spelt after “an accident between an artist and an artificial intelligence”, Doropoulos says. The two-story space is in the city’s fast-developing Zetland area, and opens with a show of new silkscreen paintings by Marco Fusinato (US$35,000-$45,000). Fusinato represented Australia in the 2022 Venice Biennale, participating every day in a performance that ran for the event’s 200-day run.
The Palas founders plan to join the international art fair circuit, they say. “Artists here want to engage more internationally but it can be a very difficult leap, without physically relocating to the northern hemisphere, which can take years out of their practice,” Glenn says. Doropoulos adds that there is also demand from artists outside of Australia to build their profile there. “The biennial and museum sectors are showing a much better exchange but the gallery sector is not as participatory overseas,” she says. Other shows in the pipeline include those of the Irish artist Eva Rothschild, who also recently represented her country at Venice, and Canada’s Tamara Henderson.
Experimenting with a new business model is Matt Carey-Williams, who left Victoria Miro gallery in London last year and is now setting up solo. His venture will have a physical space — at 12 Porchester Place near Marble Arch — where he will hang about 10 small and short shows a year, each a “close up” of one artist. The first of these “Scenes” runs February 6-March 2 with work by Glen Pudvine (b1989, £3,500-£11,000), whom Carey-Williams first encountered at Pudvine’s Royal Academy Schools’ graduate show. It’s at this level that Carey-Williams feels he can really make a difference, offering exhibitions without demanding official representation. “There is a real thirst for artists who haven’t even graduated yet, which is risky for everyone, especially the artist,” he says.
He will supplement the Scene showings with “Episodes”, larger-scale group exhibitions based on a theme, which will run in different venues around the world. The first of these, Bump, will be at Frieze’s 9 Cork Street building, March 7-23, and will comprise 21 artists including Marc Dennis, Clare Woods and Flora Yukhnovich (prices up to $140,000). Carey-Williams says he is likely to go to Seoul for a future Episode in the autumn.
Hot on the heels of his Blackness, White, and Light exhibition that closed this month at the Mumok museum in Vienna, American artist Adam Pendleton gets his first solo gallery show in New York for more than 10 years at Pace from May 3. The show, including 20 recent paintings and works on paper, is an extension of the Vienna exhibition — which itself was a continuation of his best-known series, Black Dada and introduced colour for the first time. The Pace works will be priced between $65,000 and $450,000.
The artist’s “nearly continuous institutional exhibitions over the past 10 years”, including also at New York’s Museum of Modern Art and the KW Institute of Contemporary Art in Berlin, are a reason why it has taken so long for him to have a commercial show in his home town, says Samanthe Rubell, president of Pace, which has represented the artist since 2012. The artist, who explores the relationship between blackness and abstraction, is “one of the most relevant working today” and “reflects how we experience the world in the 21st century through its palpable feeling of everything happening at once”, she says.
Institutional demand has not exactly cooled — also in the planning is a large-scale, site-specific commission for the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington DC, slated for Spring 2025.
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