Sotheby’s to host Singapore auction of Raden Saleh, Walter Spies, David Hockney and more

Sotheby’s Modern And Contemporary Art Auction

Held within a private European collection for over a century, Indonesian Romantic painter Raden Saleh’s The Eruption Of Mount Merapi, By Day (1865) will be on public display at The Singapore Edition hotel from Jan 21, before it goes under the hammer in a live auction on Jan 25.

The work – which depicts three small figures dwarfed by the majestic volcano and its plume of black ash – is expected to fetch between $700,000 and $1.3 million. Expectations are high as two of the artist’s landscapes sold around their high estimates at $2 million and $648,000 at Sotheby’s 2025 Singapore auction.

Another highlight of the auction is German painter Walter Spies’ Die Schlittschuhlaufer (The Ice Skaters) (1922), a rare winter painting before the artist famously travelled to tropical Java in 1923. The painting of a joyous moonlit scene is expected to fetch between $980,000 and $1.8 million.

Celebrated British artist David Hockney will also make his auction debut in Singapore with three works from his 2011 iPad drawing series The Arrival Of Spring In Woldgate, East Yorkshire.

After Sotheby’s failed to sell a work by Russian and French artist Marc Chagall with a lower estimate of $1.35 million in 2025, it is bringing out a painting originating from the artist’s estate – Couple Et Mimosas (1967) has a relatively modest lower estimate of $420,000.

Works by Japanese pop artist Takashi Murakami, South Korean minimalist Lee Ufan, Chinese-French painter Zao Wou-Ki, Vietnamese pioneering artists Le Pho and Mai Trung Thu, as well as Singaporean artists Cheong Soo Pieng and Jane Lee will also be on show and go under the hammer.

Where: Ballroom, Level LG, The Singapore Edition, 38 Cuscaden Road
MRT: Orchard
When: Jan 21 to 24, 11am to 6pm, and Jan 25, 11am to 3pm for the exhibition; Jan 25, 5pm for the auction
Admission: Free
Info:

str.sg/FkQs

Elia Nurvista And Bagus Pandega: Nafasan Bumi – An Endless Harvest at Singapore Art Museum

Indonesia is the world’s largest palm oil producer and the biggest global supplier of nickel. Two Java-based Indonesian artists on show at the Singapore Art Museum (SAM) take nickel and palm as their raw materials to make art which thinks through how these industries have shaped people and the environment.

Elia Nurvista’s work, in particular, draws attention to the unseen and the unusable. In a ceiling-to-floor-length diptych of batik on cotton work Exhausted (2026), figures of women mutating palm-like features punctuate a tropical landscape. Women are often the invisible labour on plantations, says Nurvista, whose use of batik also evokes how the art form and fabric travelled to Africa through the Dutch colonial trade.

In Bodies In Penumbra: The Soft Machinery Of Light (2026), she looks beyond the utilitarian and economic value of the palm. Discarded materials from the palm tree on plantations, such as the palm fronds and palm trunk, are used to create classical sculptures, monuments to the persistence of materials after being extracted.

On the other hand, Bagus Pandega’s works are kinetic installations and modular systems that are not so much operated by humans as they are by non-human elements. In L.O.O.P (Less Organic Operation Procedure) (2026), a 10m-long conveyor belt system carrying nickel ore fragments from Sulawesi is regulated by tropical plants through biofeedback signals.

Curated by SAM’s Syaheedah Iskandar, the show is a potent visualisation of extraction’s long histories and afterlives.

Where: Gallery 3, Level 3 Singapore Art Museum, 01-02 Tanjong Pagar Distripark, 39 Keppel Road
MRT: Tanjong Pagar
When: Jan 16 to May 31, 10am to 7pm daily
Admission: Free for Singaporeans and permanent residents
Info:

str.sg/jaAU

Where Purity Resides

Established in 1941, Siong Leng Musical Association is at the forefront of blending Nanyin – a musical art form from China’s Fujian province – with genres such as pansori (Korean musical storytelling) and Asli music, which often features elaborate singing with text based on a Malay poetic form.

The group’s young musicians have found contemporary expression for ancient forms.

But Siong Leng’s upcoming concert Where Purity Resides returns to its roots with a performance featuring its classical traditions and Nanyin in its unembellished form. The show will have minimal set and lighting, spotlighting the four Nanyin instruments – namely the Nanyin sanxian, Nanyin pipa, Nanyin dongxiao and Nanyin erxian.

Siong Leng hopes the concert can be “a quiet and resolute commitment to an ancient voice” and “an invitation to slow down (and) listen deeply”. At a time when Nanyin is increasingly commercialised and turned into spectacle, this performance returns the ponderous musical form to its contemplative roots.

Where: Esplanade Recital Studio, 1 Esplanade Drive
MRT: City Hall/Esplanade
When: Jan 23, 7.30pm
Admission: $50, eligible for SG Culture Pass
Info:

str.sg/AAyK