IN PERSON / OUTDOORS / FAMILY / EXHIBITION

Pip & Pop – When flowers dream

Date 21 May 2022 - 5 March 2023
Location Exhibition located at the Shirley Sherwood Gallery in Kew Gardens, London

The Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew presents Pip & Pop

Inspired by mythologies and folklore, Pip & Pop’s work explores themes of consumption, wish- fulfillment, and seemingly endless abundance, using eye-popping candy colours and a playful sense of perspective to immerse audiences in her uniquely wonderful world.

This is the debut London exhibition for Australian artists Tanya Schultz, who works as Pip & Pop to create immersive installations from an array of materials, including sugar, modelling clay and sweets, as well as objects sourced on her travels all over the world.

The exhibition will also include a brand-new installations exploring the idea of a food utopia for the future, this hand-assembled, technicolour installation will be filled with references to underutilised edible plants. Taking the shape of a highly detailed and colourful landscape, the piece also draws inspiration from imaginary worlds from legends including Luilekkelerland and the Land of Cockaigne- mythological realms where everything the eye can see is created from food.

Research by Kew Scientists and partners all over the world has highlighted plant-based foods of the future including Pandanus, Akkoub and Morama bean, which provide the inspiration behind the installations at the heart of this exhibition- vivid and optimistic vision of foods for the future.

About Pip & Pop

Tanya Schultz (Pip & Pop) creates excessively detailed colour-saturated installations from an array of everyday and sweet materials. Her work draws wide inspiration from fictional geographies, tales of geological forms like rocks or mountains coming to life, and paradise mythologies, where we can escape our earthly realities. She is fascinated with imagined utopias, the mythical places of abundance and immortality that may or may not exist. Tanya has exhibited her work throughout the world including in Japan, Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Singapore, Netherlands, Belgium, Germany, UK, Mexico, USA and New Zealand. Recent works include; Together we light up the Sky, Museum of Contemporary Art Queretaro, Mexico, In Search of the Moon and the Sun, Taoyuan Museum of Fine Art, Taiwan, and The Cosmic Cave at Meow Wolf, USA.

Pip & Pop is supported by the Western Australian Government through the Department of Local Government, Sport and Cultural Industries as part of the UK/Australia Season 2021-22.

Image credit: When happiness ruled (2016), Jack Ball © Perth Institute of Contemporary Arts (PICA), Australia

About the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew

  • The Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew is a world-famous scientific organisation, internationally respected for its outstanding collections as well as its scientific expertise in plant diversity, conservation and sustainable development in the UK and around the world. Kew Gardens is a major international and a top London visitor attraction. Kew Gardens’ 132 hectares of landscaped gardens, and Wakehurst, Kew’s Wild Botanic Garden, attract over 2.5 million visits every year. Kew Gardens was made a UNESCO World Heritage Site in July 2003 and celebrated its 260th anniversary in 2019.