A fair way to make a living

At a time when multinational art fairs are popping up all over the city, Jennifer Chan sits down with Affordable Art Fair’s director Stephanie Kelly to talk about the opportunities and problems facing Hong Kong’s budding and blooming art scene.

“Royals are not allowed to be photographed during interviews,” she jokes when we arrange a seat at the table for her which has a nicer background for a photograph.

For some reason, it sounds to me like a rejection of the idea in a diplomatic way. She obviously senses my worries and explains: “Oh it’s nothing related to this meeting.”

It follows a fit of awkward laughter.

But the Fair director can get serious when we talk about art, a field she accidentally stumbled into three years ago when Affordable Art Fair was just planning to launch in Hong Kong.

Married with two children, Kelly is now heading up a Fair that generates more than 29,000 visitors and HK$39 million in art sales. And it’s just getting started.

Over the past few years, this once deemed “cultural desert” city has been rapidly moving closer towards the pinnacle of the international art market, and has now become the world’s third largest art market in auction sales.

Attracted by the low tax system and well-developed logistic networks, more galleries and artists are joining Hong Kong’s burgeoning art market.

Since Art HK, the local predecessor of Art Basel, launched in town and stirred up a buzz around art and culture in our daily conversation, gallery numbers have doubled from 50 to 120 units within the city to date.

Even more, art has now been brought closer to the public with more corporate institutions voluntarily initiating art-related activities to capture the growing art-appreciating crowd in Hong Kong.

Local art activities from the likes of Street Art Festival’s HKWalls, HK Contemporary Art Association, and the billion-dollar project, West Kowloon Cultural District, have also exploded onto Hong Kong’s art scene.

“The art ecosystem is just bubbling away, it’s now becoming so multi-layered,” she marvels.

“Here you see galleries develop and art fairs pop up, but more interestingly, you see the emergence of grassroots art.”

Affordable Art Fair joined the fray two years ago with a goal to shine a light on local talent and to entice newer art buyers with a more favourable price point from HK$1,000 to HK$10,000.

“We have a mission to enrich people’s life through the arts.”

With art pieces at a “lower” price, the Fair targets first-time buyers by offering them incentives to start buying through educational programmes, interactive talks and exhibition activities.

Buying art is like falling in love. The idea is to take participants around five galleries, each gallery for about five minutes. This is the idea of giving people the confidence to talk to more galleries to find galleries they like.

But there is still a lot of work to do. Only 15% of visitors actually make a purchase compared with the 40% from some Western contemporary art hubs the Fair covers such as London.

“The rate of art ownership in Hong Kong is undeniably lower. People in Hong Kong don’t often have art on their walls. It’s relatively harder to drive them to buy their first piece.

“But it’s a journey. People who come to our Fair in the first year probably wouldn’t buy, in the second year they may start to have purchase intention, and more often people would make purchases on their third-year visit.”

When our long-awaited desserts are finally served and we are both satiated, our conversation comes to a close.

“I think art never has budgets, we rely on partnerships really.”

Luckily, the Fair has secured DBS as its regional title sponsor.

“I guess if you look at the columns that are dedicated to art this week, I’d say this market is developing rapidly. There’s so much noise out there about encouraging people to immerse themselves into art. We are getting there.”

Lunch box
Venue: Oolaa Petite
Main: Caprese risotto
Service: Slow