Art Stage Singapore 2014 hits a high note

Singapore was the centre of high art, glamour and culture in January when the fourth edition of Art Stage Singapore brought together some of the world’s top galleries, influential art personalities and artists from all walks of life.

For four days, from 16 to 19 January, the Sands Expo and Convention Centre at Marina Sands was buzzing with art frenzy. A total of 158 galleries exhibited at the fair, with 75% of them being Asia Pacific-based. Among the leading galleries present at Art Stage Singapore 2014 included ARNDT (Singapore, Berlin), De Sarthe Gallery (Hong Kong), Linda Gallery (Jakarta, Singapore, Beijing), Ota Fine Arts (Singapore, Tokyo) and White Cube (Hong Kong, London, Sao Paulo).

Art Stage Singapore, which in the last two years has become Asia’s leading art fair, takes its role of connecting the world to the best of Asian contemporary art seriously. While the fair does serve as a market platform where collectors and galleries get to acquire artworks, it also provides a crucial and much needed platform for discourse and for the exchange of ideas on Asian art.

Further enforcing its goal to bridge the Asian art scene with the wider global audience, Art Stage Singapore 2014 introduced a new format, The Platforms. A total of eight regional and country platforms were created, namely Southeast Asia, Australia, Central Asia, China, India, Japan, Korea and Taiwan Platforms. The Platforms showcased an extensive array of projects from the Asia Pacific region which were presented in a museum-like exhibition layout.

The Southeast Asia Platform hosted numerous galleries from the region with each country in being appointed a Country Adviser that acted like a curator. Simon Soon, an art writer and a PhD scholar in Southeast Asian art history in Sydney, Australia, was the Country Adviser for Malaysia. Three Malaysian galleries were presented in the Southeast Asia Platform, namely Wei-Ling Gallery, Richard Koh Fine Art and G13 Gallery. These three galleries represented works of the artists Anurenda Jegadeva, Justin Lim and Haslin Ismail respectively.