The Australians, who will be the featured country next year, did better. Alcaston sold a splashy piece by Aboriginal artist Sally Gabori to a Korean collector for $45,000, while Melbourne’s Arc One gallery did well with a sophisticated selection that included limited-edition silkscreen prints by hot Tibetan contemporary artist Gonkar Gyatso and sculptures and prints by Robert Owen. They had three of Gyatso’s "Buddha in Our Time" works, which, in an edition of 50, is now trading at $7,000 a print. Arc One’s director Suzanne Hampel felt positive about the connections that she and her artists had made through the fair and said she is looking to 2011 with optimism.

Meanwhile, major Korean galleries were not reluctant to admit that KIAF had been more about connections than sales for them this year. Seoul’s ARARIO Gallery, which also operates out of an impressive space in Beijing, has made a speciality of Indian contemporary art and took the opportunity of the fair to show major new works by Subodh Gupta at their downtown gallery while displaying one choice piece — "Sunflower," a concoction of steel kitchen implements — in their KIAF booth. Their curator, Junghwa Ryu, was pleased to report visits by representatives from the Guggenheim and the New Museum, but sounded a pessimistic note about the future of art fairs like KIAF. While asserting that the Fair had been more successful than Art Taipei and ShContemporary, she agreed the lack of "impressive results" this year put a question mark over the ability of Asian contemporary art fairs to truly attract collectors.

Meanwhile, hope springs eternal in art-fair land. Around the booths at KIAF there was buzz over former Art Basel supremo Lorenzo Rudolph’s plans for Art Singapore next January — a dead time for the art world generally but a pleasantly balmy season in Asia. Rudolph, it was felt, might have the clout to create an Asian fair to compete with ART Hong Kong in a city-state that shares Hong Kong’s free port status. Meanwhile, KIAF looks to its strength — its informed and outward-looking collectors, who organizers hope will be seen again, when the shadow of the global financial crisis finally passes away.