Nova Contemporary gallery taps into Thailand’s burgeoning market – The Art Newspaper

The influential Thai gallery Nova Contemporary is expanding this month, opening a 412 sq. m location in Bangkok’s Bang Rak neighbourhood. The inaugural show, Affinities (26 April to 5 July), is a survey of 28 mostly Thai contemporary artists organised in co-operation with Bangkok CityCity Gallery. The relaunch comes at a time when the Thai art market is “definitely expanding”, albeit gradually, says the gallery’s founder, Sutima Sucharitakul.

The past few years have brought “a noticeable growth in local collectors and international interest”, Sucharitakul says, even amid “a whole slowing down and collectors being more cautious with their spending, despite us being a smaller, emerging scene”. Although Thailand boasts a long and rich art history, local collectors have been slow to warm up to contemporary art. She describes a “cross-generational pool” of collectors becoming more receptive to diversifying across region and medium, with collectors of blue-chip and Western artists also “open to exploring what they are not accustomed to. We have more mature collectors who will buy Modern art but also video work, and many young collectors who are just growing their collections and are now looking towards local practices.”

A youthful vibe

Nova Contemporary’s move came about organically, Sucharitakul says, prompted by the lease for the gallery’s original location in the Lumpini neighbourhood expiring after eight years. Bang Rak, Bangkok’s former central business district, offers a more youthful vibe with proximity to a university and public transport. The group show, with work spanning three decades, “establishes that there really is a history and community of contemporary art here in Thailand”, Sucharitakul says. “While it’s a relatively shorter history, it shows how much has evolved but also remained grounded within our local scene.”

The exhibition includes the Thai Pavilion presentation at the 2005 Venice Biennale, Those Dying Wishing To Stay, Those Living Preparing To Leave, by close friends Araya Rasdjarmrearnsook and the late Montien Boonma. Other artists include Korakrit Arunanondchai, Mit Jai Inn and Arin Rungjang. “It really explores different Thai-inflected concepts and narratives that still intrigue and bind together different generations of artists,” Sucharitakul says. “There is a real spirit of creating here …[with] so many good artists that produce and interact.”

Since 2017, Nova Contemporary has risen to regional prominence by representing Thai artists like Pam Virada and Prae Pupityastaporn, plus other Southeast Asian figures like Moe Satt and Sawangwongse Yawnghwe, both from Myanmar. The decade-old Bangkok CityCity Gallery has developed in tandem with Nova, and supports Thai artists like Orawan Arunrak and Miti Ruangkritya as well as regional artists like Singapore’s Ho Rui An. In 2016 the CityCity Gallery co-founded the Bangkok Art Book Fair, and in 2018 established a non-profit arm, Open Field, which that year organised the acclaimed video and performance art series Ghost:2561. “Somehow here in Bangkok we all manage to synchronise without competing, and that is what’s really special about the city,” Sucharitakul says.

Bangkok’s art boom comes at a politically complicated time, as the monarchy-backed military has continued to chip away at what remains of Thailand’s veneer of democracy. In 2020, the government brutally repressed student protests calling for a return to full democracy, with many still detained under one of the world’s harshest lèse-majesté laws. In 2023 the military, whose majority of seats in parliament allowed it to veto any elected coalitions, refused to seat the head of the reformist Move Forward Party, which won a landslide victory. Sucharitakul says the gallery programme “has always maintained an anthropological perspective” on the upheaval. “Many of our artists engage with Thailand’s political past and present, incorporating these narratives into their practices in ways that reflect, critique and reimagine them,” she says.

Coups have done less than Covid-19 to dent the tourism industry in Thailand. Tourism has now mainly rebounded to pre-pandemic levels, but it has a limited impact on the art market. “Everyone wants to visit Thailand,” Sucharitakul says. “But I don’t think the increase in tourism has any impact on serious sales. It has been hard to get non-Southeast Asians to appreciate Thai art.”

That does not stop Sucharitakul from trying, and her effort is not solitary. Nova’s reopening comes hot on the heels of the February launch of the Khao Yai Art Forest (see below), which is connected to the Bangkok Kunsthalle that opened last year. The highly anticipated Thailand Biennale Phuket will take place from November, and the private contemporary art museum Dib Bangkok is set to open in December. They join older projects like the private museum Maiiam in Chiang Mai, established in 2016, the Bangkok Art Biennale, running since 2018, and a branch of regional powerhouse gallery Richard Koh Fine Art, established in 2018.

“All of these projects have different aims and complement one another,” Sucharitakul says. She expresses particular excitement for Dib Bangkok. “Designed by world class architects, the museum will house an incredible collection including works by two of our represented artists, Kawita Vatanajyankur and Prae Pupityastaporn. I think it really is about time for Bangkok and Thailand. Many projects are finally coming to fruition, and it’s a blessing we are all working at the same time. I have a lot of hope.”

• Affinities, Nova Contemporary, Bangkok, 26 April-5 July