Women at the forefront

Fine art trends in Hong Kong this season include Chinese contemporary art and works by female artists.

The opening of M+ in November 2021 seems to have renewed collectors' interest in Chinese contemporary art. "It's a great time to be buying truly historic works by this generation of Chinese artists," Branczik notes. Sotheby's on Oct 6 presented New Wave Beyond Yuanmingyuan: An Important European Private Collection of Chinese Contemporary Art, with Yu Youhan's Circle 1986-8 fetching HK$7.56 million.

Christie's will hold Rich Golden Hues and Graceful Forms: Classical Chinese Furniture from the Tseng Collection on Nov 29. The sale will offer the rarest and finest huanghuali (Chinese rosewood) furniture from the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644), with individual pieces expected to achieve up to HK$12 million. On the same day, an exquisite, carved meiping vase with dragon motif will lead the auction house's Important Chinese Ceramics and Works of Art sale. The vase is expected to fetch up to HK$80 million.

Female artists are in focus at auctions as well as other exhibition spaces. Louise Bourgeois' Spider IV became the most valuable sculpture ever sold in Asia in April, when it achieved HK$129.2 million. Art Intelligence Global's Hong Kong exhibition space launched with Shatter: Color Field and the Women of Abstract Expressionism, earlier this month. The trend is a global one, with more than 90 percent of exhibitors at this year's Venice Biennale being either women or gender-nonconforming, while at Sotheby's most-recent The Now Evening Auction in New York, women for the first time outnumbered their male counterparts. "That's reflective, I think, of the long-overdue critical reappreciation we're witnessing across institutions and in the market for the huge wealth of talent that exists among female artists, both those practicing today and those of previous generations," says Branczik.

Sotheby's is playing a significant role in bringing works by many of today's most coveted emerging women artists to Hong Kong. The list includes Lucy Bull, Maria Berrio, Lauren Quin, Emily Mae Smith, and Anna Weyant. "The interest in Western contemporary art is seemingly insatiable, and the auction houses are more than happy to fill this demand, always looking to educate their collectors in this continually expanding field," says Goldsmith.