Singapore Art Week: Sotheby's finds 35 per cent more

MARKET DESK · SINGAPORE

Sotheby's Modern & Contemporary Art sale at The Singapore EDITION on 25 January was up 35 per cent on the 2025 edition, The Straits Times reported (via ART SG). That is a meaningful turn. The January 2025 sale made S$12.3 million (US$9.06 million) with 79 per cent of lots sold, just below the S$12.4 million of 2024 and about half of the house's S$24.5 million Singapore debut in 2022 (ArtAsiaPacific).

The records went to Southeast Asian artists. Pacita Abad's Assaulting the Eye with Ecstasy (1984) sold for S$495,300 (US$389,100), more than four times its low estimate and well above her previous US$158,000 benchmark set in Manila in 2022 (HENI). Anthony Poon's Colour Waves (1986), the largest work by the Singaporean artist to come to market, made a record S$165,100, double its low estimate. Three David Hockney iPad drawings made S$1.07 million together, and a Marc Chagall work on paper made S$736,600, a record for a Chagall on paper sold in Asia.

The fair side was busier still. ART SG's fourth edition closed on 25 January with more than 43,000 visitors and over 100 galleries, including ten from India, up from three in 2025.

What it means for collectors: Singapore remains a regional, not a global, sale: a strong week there is measured in tens of millions of Singapore dollars, not hundreds. Its value is price discovery for Southeast Asian modern and contemporary names, and on this evidence buyers are paying up for museum-scale works by regional artists.