New Life

Tell us a bit about yourself!
My name is Milon, and I’ve been running a secondary art marketplace called Art Again for about two years now. We basically try to build a platform where people who own art can buy and sell from each other from private collections.

The problem that we’re trying to address is that a lot of people who own art are unable to resell it, and it’s taking up a lot of space in their homes. So we’re seeing a lot of people who are motivated to finding a way to resell art and to do it on their terms.

How did you first get into such a niche industry?
I used to work in corporate, then I decided that I wanted to build my own thing. When I was soul-searching and finding myself, as people do before they turn 30, the problem landed on my lap—a friend’s mum was looking to sell a couple pieces of art that she bought in the early 2000s.

So I reached out to my now co-founder, Chin Yi, who at the time was my only friend working within the industry as an art broker. She didn’t have a solution, which I thought was weird, and she mentioned that it’s actually a huge problem in the industry, where art doesn’t get serviced as it should. Eventually, we decided to build something together, and a year into it, she joined us full-time and we’ve been doing this quite seriously ever since.

That’s interesting! Tell us more about how Art Again has grown in the past couple of years.
I think we’re seeing the industry take notice of us more. A lot more people are reaching out to us, and we’ve also expanded out of Singapore recently, and are now based in Indonesia. We even have a Taiwanese seller on board now!

What has this expansion process been like for the team?
I think it’s been pretty exciting. There seems to be a lot of enthusiasm about what we do, and we’re expanding quite quickly accordingly.

In a similar vein, what has it been like working with friends?
We define boundaries very clearly and mutually, which is good. I think it’s also matured the friendship along the way. We always say friends first, colleagues second and I think we really do respect that, which has been nice and fun.

Apart from working with amazing people, what do you love most about the job?
I love meeting new people (sellers) with interesting lives. We go down and shoot each and every artworks ourselves, so we get to meet these sellers and they’ll tell us the greatest stories we’ve ever heard! You can also see the excitement that they genuinely have about their artwork.

On the flip side, I also love meeting new or first-time art owners and buyers, because I know that whatever they acquire, it’ll stick with them for life. Being positioned at such a pivotal point in their lives is one of the aspects that I really enjoy.

So what’s the best story you’ve heard so far?
So many! I think it’s usually the stories where the collector has befriended the artist that stick with me most. Sometimes, these artists are your really well-known Singaporean ones that have gone down in history books and will never be forgotten and have super expensive resale values.

Stories like these just puts things into perspective for us, because when someone is put on a pedestal, they feel less human to us on the ground. So it’s nice to know that the people who have created these wonderful works of art who once felt so out of reach were actually sweet, decent human beings who lived a normal life like us, and were just so brilliant in their own humble way.