Fairy Tales celebrates art and film that explores this evolving narrative form and the fascination it has commanded for centuries.

Drawing on popular themes of magic, enchantment and transformation, the paintings, drawings, sculptures, installations, film clips, props and costumes draw not only on well-known narratives – such as ‘Little Red Riding Hood’, ‘Sleeping Beauty’, ‘Snow White’ and ‘Hansel and Gretel’ – but also lesser-known stories to examine anxieties around power imbalances, injustice and fighting adversity.

Stunning works by international artists and filmmakers including Yayoi Kusama, Kiki Smith, Tracey Moffatt, Ron Mueck, Jim Henson and Maurice Sendak, among many others, demonstrate the ways fairy tale motifs and metaphors continue to upend established ideas and confront real-world challenges; illustrating how, in publication contributor Jack Zipes’s words, ‘fairy tales have a meaningful social function in revealing the gaps between truth and falsehood in our society’.