A London auction house is celebrating how some of China's leading artists have adapted Chinese traditional culture by putting up for sale a number of important contemporary ink paintings. 

The 92-lot sale, called "an Odyssey in Ink", has attracted substantial interest, with the majority of art up for auction normally only available on the Chinese mainland and the region of Hong Kong. 

It includes work from more than 40 contemporary Chinese artists from Huang Miaozi, who was a cartoonist in 1930s Shanghai, to Li Xubai's mountain waterfall scenes. 

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Lazarus Halstead, the head of Asian Art at Chiswick Auctions said: "The medium of ink on paper is something which has been the predominant form of painting in China throughout the last maybe 5,000 years. So these works pay homage to the great tradition of Chinese ink painting but they also inject something new which might be links to Western art."

Demand for ink paintings is on the rise, especially in China. That sector had its highest ever auction turnover value in 2019, worth $1.3 billion, according to the Artprice database. 

"The price point is really very competitive, some of the emerging artists that we've got covered in the sale start at five hundred pounds, so I think that the moment of ink is coming." Halstead added.

Video editing: Sam Cordell