> Art of Travel
URBAN MUSE As Hong Kong stakes it’s global claim among the contemporary art world with such fairs as Art Basel, Mark Ellwood uncovers how a growing local legacy is being uniquely fostered.
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fter buying a controlling stake in a local fair, the world’s most prestigious collecting showcase, Art Basel, arrived in Hong Kong in 2013. Just three years later, the Asian outpost of this storied European firm was such a phenomenon that its entire ticket run of 70,000 sold out; the local tourism board has even dubbed March ‘art month’ in Basel’s honor. Veteran local consultant Alison Pickett, who works with the likes of Swire Hotels, says she’s seen “many art fairs come and go,” but the arrival of Art Basel Hong Kong (ABHK) has further transformed the city into a cultural hub. “Without the handicap of a previously existing or jaded high-profile art culture,” she adds, “Hong Kong has been very open to new experiences and opinions.” Yet it isn’t just curiosity that’s turbocharged the Hong Kong fair—there are smart commercial reasons for its overnight success, too. Hong Kong is 70
FALL+WINTER 2016/17
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a free port where taxes are comparatively low: on purchases (sales tax is zero) and on incomes (up to 15 percent, versus as high as 45 percent in China). As such, Christie’s and Sotheby’s have booming showrooms here, while PRC-based auctioneers such as China Guardian and Poly have recently opened satellite spaces in Hong Kong to snag a share of this lucrative new market. Those same tax breaks, alongside Hong Kong’s curious, wealthy local collecting base has lured a slew of blue chip galleries to invest in sites here, too. Art fans can view the likes of Galerie Perrotin from Paris, London’s White Cube, and New York-based Lehmann Maupin. There are slight differences in the way such galleries operate here compared with other global cities, at least according to Nick Buckley-Wood. Tall and with the perfect diction of a British public schoolboy, the investment banker-turned-gallery director works for Labyrinths gallery. This is one of several spaces owned by Pearl Lam, a Hong
Kong native who was one of the country’s first major collectors; she now owns a string of spaces across the People’s Republic of China. “Hong Kongers love convenience, and everything here in Central is walking distance and you can get between buildings without going outside,” Buckley-Wood says on a sweltering summer afternoon from his whitewashed, air-conditioned hideaway. Labyrinths is located on the sixth floor of the Pedder Building in the Central district, one of several such gallery-clusters here. Others include the nearby 50 Connaught Road (home to both Perrotin and White Cube) and the brand new Soho 189 Art Lane complex in Sai Ying Pun (where Lam operates another gallery). Buckley-Wood points out other local quirks. Rather than seeking out edgy or pioneering locales, which he says is so common elsewhere, Hong Kong galleries sit in smaller spaces grouped together in the city center. These closet-sized showrooms cycle through shows
PHOTO: COURTESY PEARL GALLIERS
(FROM LEFT): Artist Gonkar Gyatso’s “Untitled 2007”; “Holy Man” (Mansusia Suci), 2015, by Gatot Pujiarto; Golnaz Fathi’s “Untitled 2012.”