A Fair Go For All: Art Fairs Ponder Their Future

My experience running a gallery in Singapore between 2010 to 2016 made it quite clear to me that the established gallery model that I was exposed to at the beginning of my career was failing. The good news is however, especially in Southeast Asia where business practices in the arts have not existed long enough to resemble establishment groupthink, new models are appearing all the time. Unfortunately for many initiatives, they lack the scale required to make a significant impact on the market to reflect real sector-wide change. I will begin with the most significant game changer for the art market in the last 10 years: art fairs. 

Many of Asia’a oldest art fairs were started by and managed by the galleries themselves in countries such as Singapore, Taiwan, and South Korea. In the case of Singapore, its homegrown event Art Singapore was forgone in favour of Lorenzo Rudolph’s Art Stage in 2011 (gallery associations in South Korea and Taiwan still maintain their events). Globally, art fairs have tipped the balance of power in their favour by hungrily consuming the audience for art. Although galleries have largely been complicit in feeding this hunger by training their clients and artists respectively to buy from and produce for fairs, much talk has ensued regarding a cultural backlash aiming to put audiences back into galleries. Signs of this were called out by myself in 2014 when Singapore experienced a ridiculous oversupply of art fairs. 

"My main issue is that these fairs - because of their structure and intent - degrade the essential relationship between artist, gallery and collector because they have no long-term commitment to any of these parties… It is a flaw in our current art fair landscape and one that will change only with collective organisation among the visual arts community in Singapore."

Some effort since has been made to address these concerns such as “gallery weeks” to compliment the art fairs. Currently Hong Kong Art Week and Singapore Art Week are standout examples in the region. Art Stage has even sought to replicate this with excellent results with this year’s Art Stage Jakarta Week. What these initiatives essentially address is the very unique experience that one has with an artwork viewed in context (gallery or otherwise), something that cannot be replicated in the shopping mall-like experience of an art fair. Refreshingly, Benjamin Genocchio of New York’s The Armory Show is also questioning the future of the art fair and its role as a cultural institution. 

“The art fair as an institution of the future will be a marketplace, but also a civic center, guiding visitors on an experience that should be both intimate and awe-inspiring.”

Perhaps what we are witnessing is the establishment of new expectations by galleries and audiences on the art fair. No longer simply treated as a luxury pastime for the global elite, the art fair’s role must take on a more complex educative function not unlike museums. The pressure is now on for art fairs to produce inspiring and innovative concepts to encourage participation as galleries become increasingly more selective with what fairs they choose to align with. It is with a small dose of solidarity on my part that the art fairs necessarily find themselves in a moment of instrospection as they ponder their future in the ever-changing art world.

References:

https://www.straitstimes.com/lifestyle/arts/is-the-art-fair-scene-getting-too-crowded

https://www.artsy.net/article/artsy-editorial-time-reinvent-art-fair