SINGAPORE – The second edition of mega art fair Art SG shrugged off its smaller exhibitor count to attract a record 45,300 visitors over four days, reporting major sales across galleries and reaffirming Singapore’s prospect as a global art hub.

Gallery directors noted the “higher energy” for the 2024 edition, with visitors showing a clearer intent to buy and sales being transacted more quickly.

By the end of the VIP preview on Jan 18, many booths had already placed works with both private and institutional collectors, including a few who snapped up all available works by artists such as Australian painter Del Kathryn Barton within hours of the fair’s opening.

Fair director Shuyin Yang on Jan 22 said she was gratified to see Singaporeans turn out in full force for the Singapore Art Week tentpole event from Jan 18 to 21 at the Sands Expo and Convention Centre.

This was in addition to a cosmopolitan crowd of visitors and private collectors, as well as museum directors and curators, from the rest of South-east Asia and Australia; alongside those from Japan, South Korea, China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Europe and the United States.

Among them were representatives from Hong Kong’s new M+ Museum, the director of international programmes for Sharjah Art Foundation in the United Arab Emirates, the director of Japan’s Mori Art Museum and personnel from the Whitworth Art Gallery in the United Kingdom.

Home-grown Mandopop star JJ Lin also turned some heads when he showed up to the fair on Jan 20, prompting Art SG to deploy its security detail.  

This year’s edition featured a line-up of 114 galleries from 33 countries and territories, down from 2023’s 164 exhibitors.

Ms Yang had previously said this was due to galleries having to make “difficult, strategic decisions” as freight costs stay high and other fairs heat up competition.

But there was still more on offer than most visitors could digest. A Platform programme sited eye-catching large-scale art installations around the fair, and Malaysian textile artist Marcos Kueh’s Woven Billboards: Nenek Moyang (“ancestor” in Malay) quickly became a totemic image of Art SG 2024.

Comprising layered textile “billboards, banners and postcards”, Kueh’s huge work incorporated Malaysian and Bornean imagery, and the crude imagery of street advertisements.

Presented by young Malaysian gallery The Back Room – exhibiting at an international fair for the first time – the work was sold to an unnamed institution in Singapore with a price range of between $50,000 and $100,000.

Another high-profile Platform piece, Lake No. 1 (Tide) by British artist Ian Davenport – best known for pouring liquid paint onto surfaces to create puddles – was also sold to an unnamed collector by London gallery Waddington Custot for US$360,000 (S$483,000).

There were bigger sales, chief of which was an unexhibited work by German painter and sculptor Anselm Kiefer, which Thaddaeus Ropac sold for €1.1 million (S$1.6 million).

White Cube gallery’s combined sales was one of the highest at the fair, amounting to £1.5 million (S$2.5 million). Its booth included many hard-hitters, including the illuminated text tubes of Tracey Emin and the upside down sculptures of Georg Baselitz.

Australian artist Jessica Rankin’s embroidered painting also received a lot of attention and was sold on the first day.

Asian artists were also in high demand: Lehmann Maupin sold works by South Korean artist Lee Bul for between US$200,000 and US$300,000, while Sundaram Tagore sold a range of works by Hiroshi Senju, Jane Lee, Miya Ando and Zheng Lu for a combined total of over US$1 million.

Indonesian artist Atreyu Moniaga’s complex iconography likewise proved popular, with gallery Carl Kostyal selling out his works at US$18,000 each.

Singapore-based galleries hailed this edition of Art SG as a greater success than the edition in 2023, and Can Yavuz, founding director of Yavuz Gallery, said he was already convinced in the first hours of the VIP preview based on the number of sales.

The gallery went on to sell more than 23 works, each ranging between US$5,000 and US$40,000, including pieces by Singapore artists Alvin Ong and Nicholas Ong, to both local and international collectors.

Gajah Gallery also saw its efforts to promote the late I Gusti Ayu Kadek Murniasih pay off. The Indonesian artist died in 2006 and has of late been receiving international recognition for her works on female sexuality.

Her works, along with those by established Singaporean sculptor Han Sai Por and Filipino artist Leslie de Chavez at the booth, all found buyers. Gajah Gallery declined to provide numbers, saying it had sold at least one work by every artist it brought to the fair.

Less established galleries like new gallery 39+ Art Space, located at Tanjong Pagar Distripark, had a harder time, and founder Liu Ying Mei said sales were still below expectations. 

She added, though, that the experience has been constructive, with the fair team trying hard to boost the visibility of participating galleries and educating the budding local market about art and the art business.

This was a similar point made by South Africa’s Goodman Gallery, part of an increase in African participation at the fair.

A spokesman said the ongoing Translations: Afro-Asian Poetics exhibition, organised by The Institutum at Gillman Barracks, helped it sell works by African and Caribbean artists such as Misheck Masamvu, Tavares Strachan and William Kentridge.

He added that fairs like Art SG help to introduce collectors to unfamiliar, though no less important, voices. “We are delighted to broaden the international conversation and reach of contemporary art from Africa and its diasporas.”