November will see the Perth Institute of Contemporary Arts (PICA) host the long-awaited homecoming exhibition of Perth artist Pip & Pop; and if early images are anything to go by When Happiness Ruled promises to be a wonderfully captivating, colour saturated, trippy experience.
Set to take over PICA’s central gallery space, When Happiness Ruled represents a scaling up of Pip & Pop’s artistic practice. The exhibition continues Pip & Pop’s obsession with representations of paradise and the illusions and wish-fulfilment found in folk tales, mythologies and cinema. The finely detailed and candy coloured installations which make up her work draw on inspirations as broad as the medieval edible fantasy world of Cockaigne, platform video games and Japanese spirit stories.
“My intention is to create an immersive installation that is saturated, hypnotic and overwhelming in its detail and abundance, says the artist Pip & Pop. I hope that audiences find the installation to be a dizzying, bountiful and expansive work with a sense of optimism.”
When Happiness Ruled, includes the artists first forays into kinetic sculpture, and will also include robotic elements, animating the landscapes, making colourful mountains move – and if anything adding to the exhibitions trippy nature.
In discussing Pip & Pop’s work, PICA Artistic Director Amy Barrett-Lennard had this to say, ““Her careful and laborious pouring of dyed sugar and placing of toy-like plastic, paper origami and foam components result in tantalising dreamscapes and seductive vistas populated with poetic, magical and absurd situations and moments.”
Pip & Pop’s work has been exhibited internationally in the UK and Europe and in Taiwan and Japan as well as around Australia; you for example may have seen her installation treasure mountain at Splendour last year.
Where Happiness Ruled runs from 11th November until 24th December at the Perth Institute of Contemporary Arts. For more information visit the PICA website.
For those non-Perth art enthusiasts there will also reportedly be an, as yet unannounced, Pip & Pop exhibition at the National Gallery of Victory in Melbourne at the end of the year.
Header Image: Pip & Pop, Rainbow Dream, 2016. Photo: Ones Production
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