Singapore's art scene certainly seems to be thriving at the moment. The inaugural edition of a major art fair, ART SG, kicked off during Singapore’s annual art week in January 2023 to much good cheer—after several false starts, courtesy of organisational hurdles and the global pandemic—and returns this year. The international press was relentlessly upbeat in its prognostications for the island-state’s prospects as the art mecca of the region. Forbes hailed the event as “the most sizeable art fair launch in the Asia-Pacific region in a decade,” while a piece in the Financial Times observed that “Singapore’s time may now be coming. It has maintained its status as a haven for private wealth...and as the hub market for South East Asia’s many growing economies.”

The country’s infrastructure for the visual arts is relative to its size, undeniably impressive. The National Gallery Singapore, perhaps the most prestigious museum in the region, oversees “the world’s largest public collection of Singapore and Southeast Asian modern art.” The Singapore Biennale, now managed by the Singapore Art Museum (SAM), which is dedicated to contemporary art, has so far seen seven editions since 2006. The Gillman Barracks art precinct recently celebrated its 11^th anniversary, while a second arts cluster has developed around SAM’s temporary home in the Tanjong Pagar port district. Buoyed by the launch of ART SG, several private galleries have also sprung up in the past year. One of the largest and most ambitious is the Whitestone Gallery, which occupies 20,000 sqft in Tanjong Pagar next door to its collaborator, the New Art Museum Singapore. Japanese architect, Kengo Kuma, designed the site. Hong Kong-based WOAW Gallery, founded by collector Kevin Poon, opened its Singapore outpost in a historic shophouse building, while Singaporean gallerist Christiaan Haridas, who started Haridas Contemporary in September, based his decision on a “cautious, but optimistic, outlook of both the art market and artists in Singapore.”

Almost specious—Singapore’s economy saw faster than expected growth in the final quarter of 2023—but the ecosystem is dependent, of course, on more than just the health of the art market, vital as the latter may be. Beneath the glamour and accolades, the parties and glowing headlines, lie less palatable realities. An oft-heard lament is that the city-state’s cultural content does not always live up to the sophistication of its infrastructure. Several foreign observers made this point during Singapore Art Week (SAW) last year. In a particularly critical piece penned in Chinese, titled “Singapore may be wealthy, but its art is poor,” Shanghai and London-based curator Lianyi Wang asserted that there were “almost no pointed discussions regarding social issues, and also little engagement with identity politics...race, class, religion and other relatively common topics in contemporary art, with everyone seeming to have unanimously chosen safer directions.” (Translations are this author’s own.)

As identified by Wang, the omnipresence of the state and the perceived risk of censorship are often regarded as the chief reasons for the anodyne character of Singapore’s art. While the authorities have rightly earned a reputation in the past for wielding the stick against cultural practitioners, artists in Singapore these days tend to self-censor by steering clear altogether of sensitive areas of discussion, especially if perspectives are negative. (Notable exceptions include the redoubtable Tang Da Wu, now 80 years of age.) Another frequently encountered critique is that the art scene is overly beholden to government support, whether through public institutions, state-backed projects like SAW and Gillman Barracks, or grants disbursed through agencies such as the National Arts Council (NAC). These bodies account for some of the biggest players in the ecosystem, and Khairuddin Hori, director and partner of Chan + Hori Contemporary, a curatorial and artist management advisory, and a former SAM curator, notes that the degree of official involvement is an issue. “We should not imagine that we have a holistic or thriving arts ecosystem,” he remarks, “when almost all of its entities are supported by and funnelled through a centralised node.”

Every interviewee for this article agreed on the necessity for independent efforts to exist alongside official institutions, as a means of both nurturing the creative industries and expanding the parameters of what may be said. Collector Andreas Teoh, who co-founded The Institutum, a non-profit organisation for the arts oriented towards Singapore and Southeast Asia, observed that the scene here, while generously supported by state coffers, “could stand to grow further and more sustainably with the strengthening of private initiatives. The cross-pollination of ideas and practices would certainly lead to more diverse explorations of richer themes.” Audrey Yeo, founder of Yeo Workshop, which has earned a reputation for working with local and regional artists considered cutting-edge, concurs with Teoh’s sentiments, suggesting that “the art ecosystem demands entrepreneurial endeavours that defy conventions and inject vitality. It is crucial for the authorities to recognise these bold steps as catalysts for our city's renaissance.” A perplexed Khairuddin adds, “For an international, metropolitan city-state, it is baffling that we do not have more home-grown, large-scale independent art centres or museums in operation.”

One of the few independent spaces in Singapore is Starch, started up by openly queer artist-curator Moses Tan in an industrial building in the far-flung north of the island. His aims for the space are altruistic: “On one hand I was keen to develop curatorial knowledge and on the other hand I wanted to give back, given that I have been supported through other independent spaces.” Tan points out that, aside from receiving NAC grants for specific exhibitions, Starch is completely self-funded, a situation only made financially possible by the fact that his family owns the unit in which it is housed. Government-supported projects, by contrast, face their fair share of logistical issues. Yeo, who is also the president of the Art Galleries Association of Singapore, alludes to the continued problems plaguing Gillman Barracks, where her gallery, along with a number of others, are situated. (The enclave is currently being managed by the Singapore Land Authority) “While a lush, lovely retreat, Gillman suffers from a lack of marketing and broader education initiatives,” she shares. “Consider the successful 798 art district in Beijing, for instance. Even in a country with a much larger population and a strong appetite for culture and art, its development took time. This raises concerns about our short-term horizons for the arts in Singapore. We need to reassess key performance indicators (KPIs), and prioritise qualitative measures over quantitative ones.”

It should be noted that even opinions about the viability of Singapore’s art market—one of the KPIs brought up by Yeo—differ. While general sanguinity greeted the arrival of ART SG last year, eventual sales seemed to have fallen somewhat short of expectations. A piece on Artnet News reported that works from blue-chip artists the likes of Anselm Kiefer, Antony Gormley and Christine Ay Tjoe sold at international galleries within the first two days of the fair, but regional dealers could not say the same. “They still made sales, but to existing clients in the region rather than to new ones,” the article noted. "This led some to question, despite the amount of wealth in the city-state and the region’s potential growth, if the collector pool in the region was big enough to sustain a fair of this size and a growing art market.” Stella Chang, gallery director at Richard Koh Fine Art, is also circumspect about market prospects. She observes that, despite the gallery’s strong sales record at the fair, “we've seen the market slowing down in the last year. I believe the higher interest rates, as well as the uncertain economic outlook, resulted in more cautious buyers."

The glitz and glitter, then, mask deeper problems with Singapore’s ecosystem, some of which may simply be due to broad economic forces at any one point. Other issues, however, seem to call for a concerted effort to rethink how the landscape is structured, and how its players relate one to another. Yeo is unequivocal in her assessment of potential solutions to these imbalances. “I firmly believe that nurturing the private sector is pivotal for developing thriving careers for artists and patronage,” she writes. “Supportive government policies, sustainable allocation of resources, and fostering a conducive environment will allow the arts sector to flourish, like other successful industries in Singapore before.”

(Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed here are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the official position of STIR or its Editors.)