Southeast Asia: Joining up the dots
Influential Kuala Lumpur gallery owner, Valentine Willie, has joined Borobodur auctions to unite the market of Southeast Asia. Their first Singapore sale is in October
By Anna Somers Cocks | Posted 19 July 2007
Borobodur auctions, active in Indonesia with three to four auctions a year, is to hold its first sale in Singapore this October. They have employed Valentine Willie (53), already well known in the Region for having created one of the most influential contemporary art galleries in Southeast Asia, in Kuala Lumpur. This English-educated former lawyer, speaking to The Art Newspaper, says that Borobodur intends to put together sales specifically for contemporary Southeast Asia, “to connect up the dots” in an area consisting of ten nations, 500m to 600m people and huge religious diversity, from the Catholic Philippines to Muslim Indonesia to Buddhist Thailand.
There is a distinct Southeast Asian contemporary art, he says, which he defines as post-colonial and by indigenous artists, even if deceased. The auctions will be divided into figurative, new media (photography, video, installation) and abstract, whether Western-inspired or emerging out of local, particularly Islamic, traditions: “We want to encourage a bigger market, with all countries looking at all other countries. There are similar themes everywhere: urbanisation, the transition to democracy, the colonial hangover.”
Collecting is developed to a varying degree in the Region, he says, the strongest tradition being in the Philippines because of its Spanish colonial history and its church art. Indonesia comes a close second because of the Dutch influence. But people buy art only when they already have everything else—the house, the Mercedes and the jewels—and artists struggle as elsewhere in the world, teaching, doing a bit of graphic design. He estimates that both the Philippines and Indonesia have about 5,000 artists; Malaysia, 300-500; Thailand, 1,000 or so. There are cultural oddities: Hanoi has more galleries than Thailand; Malaysia and Singapore are put together despite there being no internal market; and the buyers are all foreigners.
Asked why Borobodur has chosen Singapore, Mr Willie explains that, while the city is far from being a hotspot of creativity, its government is happy for art to come to it from the outside, as shown by its 2006 Biennale. Above all, Singapore has the infrastructure and everyone from the Region does their banking there. A gap has been left with Christie’s moving to Hong Kong, and Sotheby’s may also leave to consolidate there, so Borobodur are being made welcome in this quintessential trading city.
As for the present market, Mr Willie says that Chinese buyers are fuelling it, their speculative fervour spilling over from Chinese into Southeast Asian art, and Borobodur had Chinese buyers for the first time at its May auction. As in the West, there are excess funds looking for alternative areas of investment.
