Pip & Pop at NN Contemporary Art

Pip & Pop After Dark
Pip & Pop: After Dark. Source: NN Flickr

So the weekend is almost upon us. That glorious time when we throw off the shackles of the working world for two days and indulge in all the wonderful things Northampton has to offer. The question is, what are you going to do with that time? Visit a fantastical universe drenched in vibrant neon colours perchance?  Take a trip to NN Contemporary Art and be captivated by Australian artist Pip & Pop’s latest exhibition.

Pip & Pop is the nom de plume of Australian artist Tanya Schultz, who employs a wide range of various techniques, materials and colours to create her own fantastical, technicolour worlds. Schultz graduated with a Bachelor of Arts from Edith Cowan University in 2003 before she began creating her psychedelic landscapes. In 2007, Pip & Pop began and was the collaborative effort of Schultz and fellow Aussie artist Nicole Andrejevic. The vivid and colourful worlds are built using sand, sugar, glitter, sweets, beads, modelling clay and almost anything else that can inject life into the installation. Schultz has continued the duo’s unique style of creating bright and dazzling worlds and has exhibited across the globe, including Europe, Australia, Japan and now luckily Northampton.

NN contemporary art Pip & Pop
Pip & Pop (epicentre of the Northampton multiverse). Source: NN Flickr

Pip & Pop’s latest site-specific installation is unique to Northampton and forms the beginning of NN ‘Northampton Multiverse season’. Schultz drew inspiration for her installation from Margaret Cavendish’s ‘The Blazing World’, focusing on the idea of a utopia. Cavendish’s alternative Blazing World formed the basis for one of the worlds in graphic novelist Alan Moore’s ‘The League of Extraordinary Gentleman’. Schultz also draws from a range of different and intriguing sources including pan-Asia manga, video games, ancient maps and Aboriginal sand painting. Combine all of this with her creative talent and distinctive style and she is able to construct an unusual and immersive neon reality that will have you admiring in wide-eyed wonderment.

Pip & Pop Multiverse
Pip & Pop (epicentre of the Northampton multiverse). Source: NN Flickr

The exhibition is open until the 27th April and is certainly worth a visit. Pip & Pop manage to create a fantastical and whimsical world that is wonderfully intricate and full of intense colour and hidden surprises throughout. It is sure to have even the most stoic and serious of gentlemen unleashing their imagination and is an interesting exhibition that we would recommend any gent indulges in. We really cannot think of a more colourful way to spend a Saturday afternoon.

NN Contemporary Art
Number Nine, Guildhall Road, Northampton, NN1 1DP
www.nncontemporaryart.org

Pip & Pop
www.pipandpop.com.au

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