Pip and Pop is the pseudonym not of two people but of the one Tanya Schulz, Australian artist and creator of sugar-coated dreams. In a world where 'art' is too often obliged to be dark or heavy or complex or obscure, Pip and Pop feeds us with unapologetic delight. With installations by the name of Candylab and We Miss You Magic Land! she reignites and celebrates the child in us all. With a palette of materials from sugar to glitter, plastic to candy she unashamedly embraces the kitsch and shows no signs of stopping.
Pip and Pop's colour palette is a pastel rainbow of every saccharin hue you ever saw. Her forms are mystical mounds of sugar, fluffy pink trees, softly lit gradients suggesting worlds beyond the sugar mountains.
I saw a Dream Like This, Standing in the Sky and Love Grows a Flower are just a few of the sticky-sweet fantasy installations which Tanya Schulz has brought the world. All of them take us to other worlds, fairy dreams and all of them remind us these places are for us all, not just for children. Tanya Schulz has the honesty to show us what she really loves. I wonder if maybe that's unusual.
1, 2 and 3 Pip and Pop's Art Candy Installation, Amsterdam, 2014. All images by Willem Velthoven from Flickr under CC BY license.
