The candy land of your childhood (okay, probably also adult) dreams is on display at a gallery in Perth.
The art installation is aptly called When Happiness Ruled, and includes a delicious 450kg of sugar, dyed 120 different colours.
Although it may look like a sparkly edible miniature wonderland, it’s actually an art piece exploring happiness, pleasure, and mythical worlds.
When Happiness Ruled is the work of Australian artist Pip & Pop (real name: Tanya Schultz), and is on display at the Perth Institute of Contemporary Arts until December 24.
“I’m really interested in folk tales and mythologies about paradise and utopia, and the search for these kinds of ideal places,” Schultz tells SBS.
Pip & Pop’s work draws on countries and lands found in myths and artworks around the world - Luilekkerland, Schlaraffenland, the Land of Cockaigne - all of which are said to be made entirely of food.
“Places where sugar rains from the sky, the streets are paved with pastries and rivers flow with lemonade. In some versions of Luilekkerland, you can only enter by eating your way through a mountain of pudding,” she says.
We assume that cavities and calories don’t exist in these lands; and we’re looking for a one-way ticket.
The landscapes that weave throughout When Happiness Ruled are made from materials like sugar, glitter, pompoms, sequins, crystals, and miniature fake cakes and sweets sourced on a trip to Korea.
“Some of the objects look as though they could be either a sparkly rock or a sweet cake - they look like they have the potential to be eaten,” says Schultz. “But nothing is edible!”
With the exhibition, Schultz hopes to transport gallery-goers to “a kind of psychedelic paradise”.
All images from Pip & Pop, When Happiness Ruled, 2016. Perth Institute of Contemporary Arts. Photo: Jacqueline Ball.
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