Valentine Willie Fine Art was founded in 1996 as a pioneer consultancy for modern and contemporary Southeast Asian art, by lawyer and collector Valentine Willie, and Asian art specialist Mee-Seen Loong. In March 1997 we opened our gallery in Bangsar Baru, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

Since opening, the gallery has organised several major exhibitions. In 1996, Of Migrants and Rubber Trees, an exhibition of drawings and installations by leading contemporary Malaysian artist Wong Hoy Cheong at the Creative Centre of the National Art Gallery in Kuala Lumpur; and Imagining the Contemporary Body, an exhibition of figurative art from the Philippines, Singapore and Malaysia at Galeri Petronas. In 1997, Re-GRUP – 30 Years On, a collective exhibition of the development of seven major figures in the history of Malaysian abstract expressionist art; and ASEAN Masterworks for the ASEAN Secretariat, an unprecedented selection of major works from nine ASEAN countries.

From 2000 to 2002, we organised a landmark survey of contemporary Filipino art entitled Faith + The City, including over forty artists, touring core institutions in Singapore, Kuala Lumpur, Penang, Bangkok and Manila. In 2004, we toured Chang Fee Ming: Mekong to major spaces in Kuala Lumpur, Chiangmai and Jakarta, and put together an important review, Wong Hoy Cheong at the National Art Gallery in Kuala Lumpur. In 2007, we brought Selamat Datang ke Malaysia, a first showcase of contemporary Malaysian artists to Sydney, and co-organised Between Generations: 50 Years Across Modern Art in Malaysia at University of Malaya and Universiti Sains Malaysia.

In June 2001, we opened a gallery in Bali, and ran a residency for regional artists. In Bali. Participants have included Ben Cabrera from the Philippines and Manit Sriwanichpoom from Thailand. This year, we open in Singapore at HT Contemporary Space in Tanjong Pagar. Further afeild, we participated by invitation in the Cutting Edge section of ARCO in Madrid in 2002, and Melbourne Art Fair in 2006 and 2008.

We run on average fourteen gallery exhibitions a year, aside from offsite projects. Our yearly gallery programme is intended to present to the public a wide range of artistic practice, at once nurturing the local art scene and working towards a truly regional awareness of contemporary art. Solo exhibitions for established and young artists share a schedule with shows curated around themes and issues in our exhibition space. Apart from exhibitions, we keep a wide selection of historically important paintings and studies, works by Southeast Asian masters such as Latiff Mohidin, Onib Olmedo, Ang Kiukok and Thawan Duchanee, and regional contemporary artists, both painters and new media artists.

Our Resource Room houses a reference library of art books, magazines and catalogues with a focus on Asian contemporary art which is open to the public, as part of our agenda to gather and share information and news on regional and international practice. We regularly produce catalogues with our exhibitions, and more substantial publications for major projects, and hold talks by artists and curators from time to time.

Malaysian artists we represent include: Askandar Unglehrt, Nadiah Bamadhaj, Chang Fee Ming, Chong Siew Ying, Jalaini Abu Hassan, Kow Leong Kiang, Kok Yew Puah (the estate of), Nirmala Dutt Shanmughalingam, Phuan Thai Meng and Yee I-Lann. Regional and international artists we exhibit include Putu Sutawijaya, Popok Tri Wahyudi, Melati Suryodarmo, Mella Jaarsma, Eko Nugroho, Agus Suwage and Titarubi (Indonesia), Manit Sriwanichpoom, Kamin Lertchaiprasert, Natee Utarit, and Natthawut Sing-thong (Thailand), Geraldine Javier, Yasmin Sison (Philippines), Tang Da Wu (Singapore), Emil Goh and Lindy Lee (Australia), among others.

We have collaborated with major institutions such as the National Art Gallery and Galeri Petronas in Kuala Lumpur, Universiti Sains Malaysia in Penang, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in Manila, Chulalongkorn University in Bangkok, Chiangmai University Art Museum, the National Gallery in Jakarta, Earl Lu Gallery at LASALLE-SIA College of the Arts in Singapore, Gallery 4A in Sydney and the Organisation for Visual Arts in the UK; as well as key initiatives like The Substation in Singapore, Green Papaya Art Projects and Surrounded by Water in Manila, and Cemeti Art House in Yogjakarta. In 2004, Valentine Willie Special Projects organised a major exhibition of Fernando Botero in Singapore in association with Singapore Art Museum.