Fables | Swanfall Art Annual Exhibition 2025

SWANFALL ART returns to Mall Galleries in August 2025 with its annual exhibition. Titled ‘Fables’, the show explores how narrative functions as a method in contemporary art, reflecting a broader shift from expression to resonance.

Art’s power lies not merely in representation, but in transformation - in awakening perception, forging connection, and revealing essence. It renders the abstract perceptible and gives structure to the ineffable.

As global uncertainty persists, so too does a quiet exhaustion with formalism and aesthetic detachment - a shift increasingly felt across artistic discourse. The experience of art is moving away from self-expression and toward emotional and intellectual resonance. Viewers and collectors are turning their attention to conceptual depth and affective power over technical virtuosity or stylistic novelty. This turn reflects a deeper, often unconscious, collective longing for memory, identity, and shared experience.

Story remains a vital way we organise time, understand change, and locate ourselves in the world. Narrative is being redefined - not simply as storytelling, but as a structural and perceptual framework. Contemporary works often avoid singular viewpoints or linear conclusions, instead inviting open-ended interpretation.

This year's annual exhibition is a response to this shift - from explanation to insight, from statement to shared experience. The theme is not a return to moralistic fables, but an invitation for artists to explore emotional depth and narrative complexity across mediums. We welcome work across all media - painting, installation, moving image, text, sound, performance. We are drawn to works that generate rhythm, provoke thought, and activate the space between feeling and idea -  pieces that may resist explanation, yet resonate deeply in the silent structure between image and idea, gesture and memory.