An art fair with more than 1 billion yuan (US$140.3 million) in sales annually in mainland China has debuted in Hong Kong, with organisers saying it sets itself apart from existing shows by connecting galleries and artists from the Global South to the international market.
Bringing together nearly 90 galleries from 13 countries and regions, Shanghai-based Art021 launched Art021 Hong Kong on Wednesday and organisers said it also aimed to promote Chinese contemporary art to the world, with expectations it would bring millions of dollars to the city’s economy.
“As the most mature and largest art market in Asia, we think Hong Kong should have more than just an art week in the first half of the year,” said David Chau, co-founder of the Art021 group.
“We all know March is an important month with Art Basel, Art Central and other events, [but] if you look at London and New York, there are happenings all year round. We hope to do something here in the latter half of the year.”
Founded in 2013, the Art021 fair – deemed by some as the mainland’s answer to Art Basel – was inaugurated in Shanghai and exponentially grew to achieve more than 1 billion yuan in sales revenue in the last three years, the organisers said.
It has also held the fairs Jingart in Beijing since 2018 and DnA Shenzhen since 2021.
The Hong Kong fair, which has received funding support from the local government, is divided into four sections.
Three ticketed sections will run between Thursday and Sunday at the Asia Society Hong Kong Centre in Admiralty, the Fringe Club in Central and the Phillips Asia headquarters in the West Kowloon Cultural District. A free, non-ticketed section opened on Wednesday and runs until September 8 at Victoria Park in Causeway Bay.
The “sculpture” sections of the fair, held at Victoria Park and the Fringe Club, are free. Standard tickets to the “galleries” section at the Phillips Asia headquarters and the “expansion” section at the Fringe Club cost HK$300 (US$39) while concessions are priced at HK$150.
The “video” section at the Asia Society centre is free for students in the morning, and is HK$50 and HK$35 for standard and concession tickets.
The organisers said more than 20,000 VIPs and collectors had registered to attend the fair, with over 50 per cent from the mainland and overseas and the rest from Hong Kong. They said they expected a direct economic benefit of HK$300 million to be generated for the city.
Chau stopped short of revealing how much his company received from the government’s Mega Arts, and Cultural Events Fund for the event.
He dismissed suggestions the city’s national security laws would affect creativity and expression, saying Hong Kong was a very open and inclusive society especially towards culture.
“Artworks are still critical, but the subject of criticism is different,” Chau said. “They are more focused on the exploration of artists’ internal thoughts and their connection to the world.”
He said the company’s experience in organising art fairs for more than a decade had equipped them well in navigating relevant challenges, and that censorship was “much more stringent in the West than it is here”.
The Hong Kong fair also seeks to explore art practices from the West and Asia, featuring exhibitors such as Dastan Gallery from Tehran, showcasing a group exhibition of Iranian artists exploring the link between Asian cultural legacies and the present.
Chau said he hoped future editions of the fair would continue with the theme of the Global South, which includes the mainland, nations and regions under the Belt and Road Initiative, South America, Africa and other emerging countries, at the fair.
The mainland is represented by, among others, ShanghART Gallery, Tang Contemporary Art, Kwai Fung Hin, Hive Centre for Contemporary Art, Antenna Space, MadeIn Gallery and Triumph Gallery.
“We hope that a Chinese art fair could bring Chinese contemporary artists to the world, so people could see that Chinese contemporary art, especially the younger generation, is really world-class,” Chau said.
Chau, a member of Tate’s Asia-Pacific acquisition committee in the UK in 2021 and 2022, is also a founding member of the Asian Arts Council under the Vancouver Arts Gallery in Canada, and a patron council member of the M+ museum in Hong Kong.
Art Basel Hong Kong 2024 brought together 243 galleries from around the world, up from 177 in 2023 and 130 the year before, while Art Central 2024 had 98 selling galleries, of which 70 per cent were from the Asia-Pacific region, just short of the pre-pandemic record of 107 exhibitors.
