Georgina Adam, who has just touched down in Hong Kong for ArtHK, surveys the gallery scene for the Financial Times, including checking in with Pearl Lam:
“Art HK has done for the territory what Frieze did for London: it made people much more aware of art.” Her neighbour, Simon Lee, sees his gallery as “building bridges” to local collectors. “We had 20 Chinese for lunch recently and three were founding museums on the mainland,” he says. He is opening with a show by Sherrie Levine but comments: “I’m not expecting a bonanza of sales, this is a long-term project for me.”
“Over the past five years, we have been in touch with about 300 art-related businesses … and some 20 galleries have subsequently set up here,” says Andrew Davies, associate director-general of the government-funded InvestHK, which created a dedicated creative industries team two years ago. “There are more than 3m high net worth individuals in Asia with wealth totalling $10.8 trillion,” says Davies, who adds that the rapidly growing number of wealthy Asian and Chinese collectors “has added to the buoyancy of Hong Kong’s art market”.
