Who says you can only see art and get up close with Insta-worthy installations in galleries and museums? Now you can get your art fix at a place where you least expect: a mall. Bringing art to the mall is Creative Unions, one of over 100 programmes at this year’s Singapore Art Week.

Creative Unions, happening from Jan 22 to Feb 21, has brought 10 brands and tenants at Funan Mall and local multi-disciplinary artists together for this retail-meets-art programme. The result is a joyful array of installations perfect for the ’gram, quirky workshops for the curious and exclusive merch for the shopaholics.

Vans' pop-up photo exhibition on Level 1

How do you hunt down the stores that are part of Creative Unions? Keep your eyes peeled for the Creative Unions signage at the storefront, or scroll on for some of the highlights at Creative Unions at Funan Mall.

The well-loved homegrown brand had already carved out spaces in store specially for OOTDs and community events. These have now come in handy for their Creative Unions tie-up with artist Allison M. Low, who has transformed the mirrored pod, fitting rooms and a common space into a fantastical mixed media installation, “in celebration of the strengths of a modern woman”.

Fish curry gelato with prata shreds, anyone? Gelato gurus Butterknife Folk is no stranger to unusual flavours, but the array of flavours concocted for Creative Unions, inspired by people’s memories of the circuit breaker last year, has knocked it out the park. The store, spruced up with the playful, eclectic graphics of artist Yellow Mushmellow, now proffers 12 new kooky flavours. These include: Moonlight Prata-ta (fish curry gelato with prata shreds), Work-from-home Spa-from-home (honey blackberry lavender gelato, candied lemon peel) and Misty morning at Clementi Forest (rosemary matcha gelato, mixed berry coulis).

Mushrooms as installation art? You bet. If you’ve never been to the urban rooftop garden at Funan Mall, now’s the best time to do it. Enter the Mushroom is a weird and wonderful mushroom installation held across two rooms at the mall’s rooftop garden. For this collab between Edible Garden City (the folks who manage the garden) and mycological studio Bewilder, head fun guy Ng Sze Kiat has lovingly cultivated various types of fungi into a trippy horticulture showcase of alien-esque mushrooms. We’re told it’s best viewed at night when neon lights illuminate the display.

Singapore Art Week is on Jan 22 to 30, various locations. Full line-up and more info at www.artweek.sg.

Creative Unions is on at Funan Mall, 107 North Bridge Road, from Jan 22 to Feb 21. Open daily, 11.30am to 8.30pm. More info at https://www.capitaland.com/content/dam/sites/funan/creative-unions/v3.html.

Photos: Singapore Art Week, Jasmine Teo