INDIAN SCULPTOR Anish Kapoor’s “untitled” creation fetched £550,000 at ART HK 10, an international art fair in Hong Kong.
The Lisson Gallery sold Kapoor’s work to an Asian-based collector in the fair, which started May 28.
The international fair saw participation of 155 galleries from 29 countries, representing over 1000 artists. The number of visitors were 46,115, a sharp rise of 65 per cent from 2009.
During this five-day event, sales touched new records with Chinese painter Zhang Xiaogang’s Green Wall-Husband and Wife fetching £689,464 and artist Damien Hirst’s The Inescapable Truth fetching £1.75 million.
New York-based gallery Sperone Westwater cashed many profitable deals at its solo stand, including sale of Composition with Bamboo and Grass by Chinese artist Liu Ye’s at £448,152.
Another New York gallery, Galerie Lelong, sold More Light by Sean Scully, Irish-born American painter, at £517,098 to an Asian collector.
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Breakthrough in stem cell culturing
London: In what could be called a major breakthrough, scientists have cultured human embryonic stem cells under chemically controlled conditions without the use of animal substances, essential for future clinical uses.
A team at Karolinska Institutet in Sweden has managed to produce human stem cells entirely without the use of other cells or substances from animals. Instead they are cultured on a matrix of a single human protein — laminin 511.
“Now, for the first time, we can produce large quantities of human embryonic stem cells in an environment that is completely chemically defined.
“This opens up new opportunities for developing different types of cell which can then be tested for the treatment of disease,” Prof. Karl Tryggvason, who led the study, wrote in the Nature Biotechnology journal. Together with researchers at the Harvard Stem Cell Institute, the scientists have also shown that in the same way they can culture reprogrammed stem cells. —PTI