Fairy Tales: In Art and Film

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’.

This sumptuous hardback book produced to accompany QAGOMA’s blockbuster summer exhibition of the same name interprets fairy tale tropes within contemporary artistic and sociopolitical discourses, with scholarly contributions from exhibition curator Amanda Slack-Smith, Curatorial Manager, Australian Cinematheque, as well as eminent fairy tale experts Pauline Greenhill, Marina Warner and Jack Zipes. Australian novelist and screenwriter Holly Ringland also contributes a new short story in response to the exhibition’s themes.

Fairy Tales features full-colour illustrations of all artworks in the exhibition, as well as a complete ‘Fairy Tales’ film program listing.

Format: Hardback
Pages: 208
Imprint: Queensland Art Gallery
Publication date: 02/12/2023