The next will be in Hong Kong this March, where the new contemporary art fair Art Central, dubbed by the organisers "the first satellite fair of international standards to be staged in Hong Kong", will be scheduled to coincide with 'Art Basel - Hong Kong' (March 15-17).
Art Central, from March 14-16 (preview March 13), has been launched by a team who know the city's fair scene well: Tim Etchells, Sandy Angus and Will Ramsay, the co-founders of ART HK which was subsequently acquired by Art Basel to become Art Basel - Hong Kong. The event will be overseen by Charles Ross, who was managing director of ART HK.
Eve Share Banghart and Maree Di Pasquale also join as co-directors. Eve joined the ART HK team in 2009 and has most recently been gallery and project manager for Art Basel. Maree was formerly assistant director of Melbourne Art Fair, and worked on the launch of Sydney Contemporary prior to that.
Some 77 exhibitors are currently signed up from 21 countries, including galleries from the UK, USA, France and Germany but the majority, 65%, are from Asia Pacific countries including Australia, China, Japan, Singapore and Hong Kong. Participants include UK based The Fine Art Society Contemporary and Flowers Gallery,The Cat Street Gallery (Hong Kong), Anita Beckers (Frankfurt), Galerie Dumonteil (Shanghai, Paris, New York) and Opera Gallery who have bases across the globe.
The event will be housed, unusually for Hong Kong, in a 10,000 square metre temporary structure designed by Michael Stiff of London architecture practice Stiff & Trevillion.
While these 'structured marquees' are frequently used for London fairs, where large, well-located exhibition space is at a premium but green space is plentiful, they are more unusual in densely populated Hong Kong and this will be the largest of its kind to be erected in the city.
It will be placed on the new Central Harbour front, 2km from Art Basel's venue in the monolithic Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Center (HKCEC), the go-to venue for many other art fairs and auctions through the year.
