last update: June 19th 2013

Culture

Kevin Ching, CEO of Sotheby's Hong Kong, on the Asian market

by Paul Wheatley | May 21st 2012 | 08:30 pm

Selling exhibition of Yayoi Kusama's work at the new Sotheby's Hong Kong gallery. Image courtesy of Ota Fine Arts, © Yayoi Kusama

Kevin Ching, CEO of Sotheby’s Hong Kong, is driving the expansion of the auction house in Asia. He tells us about the new Sotheby’s gallery space, just unveiled on May 19th, and gives his opinion on the state of the market in the region.

CENTURION: Are you originally from Hong Kong?
Kevin Ching: I’m third generation Hong Kong-Chinese, which is old by Hong Kong standards because a lot of Chinese people only came after 1949. My parents were born in Hong Kong, and my grandfather came here from China at the end of the Qing dynasty. I finished my secondary school and went to university and got qualified as a lawyer in the UK. I practised as a lawyer for about ten years and then worked for 15 years as a public company director in high-end retail, fashion and watches. I’ve been with Sotheby’s for about six years.

Why have Sotheby’s opened a gallery in Hong Kong now?
We’ve been in Hong Kong since 1973 and it’s our Asian headquarters. It is one of the main three auction centres for Sotheby’s – the third largest … We’ve always had offices on a high floor of a skyscraper, but very much as an administrative office, where people could pay the bills or have meetings, but there was never a lot of art. Now that Hong Kong has become such an art town, and contributes so significantly to Sotheby’s sales, it should be giving the same client experience as in London and New York. So, we are now taking over an entire additional floor, which is dedicated to art and entertaining.

Portrait of Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama

And you’re opening with a Yayoi Kusama exhibition.
We have two exhibitions, one is Kusama, the other nineteenth-century Impressionists and landscape paintings, which are totally Western. Kusama is a very interesting mixture of East and West. She’s Japanese, a female artist and still … creating works. She’s had a very well received retrospective at the Tate Modern … and paints in a way that does not immediately appear ‘oriental’, giving her works an international appeal.

How would you assess the art market in HK and across Asia?
If we’re talking about Hong Kong being an art market and centre for Chinese and Asian art, it is super-developed – more developed than anywhere else. Although we have Chinese sales in Paris, New York and London, Hong Kong is where we sell the best quality Chinese ceramics and paintings, or anything Asian. If we’re talking about international art, then of course, you cannot compare Hong Kong to London or New York. There are increasing numbers of western galleries opening [here] – I think there is [around] one international gallery opening in HK every month … And in our auctions, five years ago we were contributing Asian option sales. Ten years ago this was about four per cent of our worldwide auction sales. Now it’s around 20 per cent.

Is this simply down to economic factors?
Like any part of the world, when people become comfortable and reasonably affluent, they look for cultural pursuits for satisfaction … They buy things they are culturally familiar with, and when they look at their immediate past, they see great imperial glory, the big emperors from the Qing Dynasty. People want to buy and hold in their hands a piece of this past imperial glory.

And opening the gallery reflects confidence that this will continue?
It will continue, with minor bumps. Asia still has a lot of growth potential, though China may slow down a little … But it is Asia and China where the markets will find a lot of growth.

Find out more about the Yayoi Kusama selling exhibition, running at Sotheby's new Hong Kong gallery until May 31st