This morning, I dropped by Artspace@Helutrans (aka that big space beside Valentine Willie Fine Art Singapore) to check out the 2010 Sovereign Asian Art Prize exhibition, which officially opens tonight. Quick background: the annual regional art contest, which is on its eighth year, is organized by the Hong Kong-based Sovereign Art Foundation. Works from artists in the Asia Pacific region are nominated and the finalists are chosen by a panel of judges (this year it’s SAM’s Tan Boon Hui, Sydney Biennale’s creative director David Elliott, Mori Museum and ex-Singapore Biennale honcho Fumio Nanjo, Chinese artist Xu Bing, Shanghai Tang founder David Tang and Kowloon Cultural District project CEO Graham Sheffield.. The exhibition then tours (HK, Beijing, and this year Singapore and Australia) before an auction/charity dinner where one of it bags the US$25,000 prize and the rest are auctioned off. The nice thing about it of course is that the proceeds are split between the artist and the Foundation, which uses it for art therapy projects in the region, including Cambodia, India, Vietnam, etc. So anyway, the works of the 30 finalists are up. Quite a nice quality batch of 2D works too. Five of them are from Singapore.