Art SG, Southeast Asia's largest art fair, returned to Singapore for its second edition on Friday.
The three-day show, hosted in the Marina Bay Sands Expo and Convention Center, featured 114 galleries from 33 countries and regions around the world, 39 of which were joining the event for the first time.
This year's edition welcomed a record attendance of over 45,000 visitors.
The international art fair is more than a gathering of established artists and collectors. It also appeals to new art buyers and art lovers with hundreds of paintings, installations, sculptures, films and talks. Southeast Asian art has been the star of the show for many, with international art lovers turning to the region for their latest discoveries.
"We're seeing a wonderful international audience of collectors, institutional visitors like museum directors, and even other art professionals like artists and advisors all flying into Singapore to take part in this week. We want to spotlight Southeast Asian art alongside the international peers and we do this by working closely with the galleries on curated presentations, public art installations, also profiling the region and its art makers within our talks, films and other programming as well," said Shuyin Yang, fair director of Art SG.
"The artists are becoming increasingly global in their languages as well, so it is even easier for international audiences to relate to the art from Southeast Asia," Yang added.
More than 5,000 art collectors from around the world attended the opening ceremony.
"Definitely there is a lot more interest in Southeast Asian artworks. I would say, even 10 years before, people were just not very knowledgeable, you're mostly concentrating a lot on Western artwork, art works from China, that's a lot more familiar. So Southeast Asian art works, besides the Southeast Asian collectors who already know the work, people are quite unfamiliar. So, with fairs like Art SG, and before that, Art Stage, I think it's a good platform to showcase Southeast Asian artworks in the world," said Stella Chang, gallery director of Richard Koh Fine Art.
"It's our second time visiting Art SG, coming to Art SG. We really enjoyed our first year. It was exciting to come. We had a great experience. You could see that this was the first year of something really good happening in the region. Singapore is also a gateway to Southeast Asia so we felt that it was a very important art fair to attend for that reason," said Faina Derman, director of White Cube, a London-based art gallery.
The international art fair also kickstarted the opening of Singapore Art Week, a celebration of art and Singapore's burgeoning art community, which runs till the end of the month.