Take Willy Wonka's chocolate room, shove it into a Japanese anime cartoon and dunk it in glitter, and you might end up with something like Tanya Schultz's work.

The Western Australian artist, who also goes by the name Pip and Pop, creates intricately detailed, rainbow-hued landscapes, using sugar as her key medium.

"It's a beautiful material, because it has this sort of sparkle, but I also love that it has this empty promise."

"Because sugar is sweet, and you're attracted to it and you feel like you want to eat it and taste it, but it's also kind of empty as well," Schultz said. Listen to the full program Hear how artist Tanya Schultz created a sugary wonderland. Read more Read more

Tanya Schultz's latest work, When Happiness Ruled, uses 450 kilograms of sugar, hand-dyed in 130 neon and pastel shades.

The sugar is heaped on low tables or "islands", to create a rugged and mountainous landscape.

The installation is also decorated with clay, sequins, vinyl, tinsel and fake hair.

Get up close enough and you can spot plastic dolls heads, beads, pom poms and flowers hidden amongst the landscape.

"Anything that's glittery, or sweet coloured or has a particular sheen to it, I'm attracted to and it usually ends up in the work," Schultz said.

Schultz says she likes the 'empty promise' of sugar as a medium. ( Supplied: Jacqueline Ball )

Sweet inspiration

The idea of "edible paradise" — a land made entirely of sweet treats — is echoed in folklore around the world.

Australian children might be raised on stories of Willy Wonka's chocolate room, the candy house in Hansel and Gretel, and the Land of Goodies in The Magic Faraway Tree.

Schultz said similar stories pop up in an array of different folk tales.

"There's a German Schlaraffenland and there's a Dutch Luilekkerland, which I think translates as 'lazy luscious land', where the world is made of food and you can have everything you desire and more," she said.

"In Luilekkerland, you had to enter by eating through a mountain of pudding. I'm fascinated by these sorts of places."

The hills have eyes

While When Happiness Ruled evokes the delicious world of Dutch folklore, it also takes inspiration from Japanese legend and animation.

The mountains that dominate the work have each been given sets of cartoon-like eyes, and thanks to robotics, they spin on their axis, giving off a cheeky and playful vibe.

Small found objects and toys are often placed within the work. ( Supplied: Jacqueline Ball )

"In Japan there's lots of anthropomorphic food and objects," Schultz said.

"There's this really lovely thing called tsukumogami, where household objects come to life after 99 years and they can be quite mischievous.

"Things actually start to come to life and there's magic embedded in these rocks and mountains."

With its neon colour palette, playful characters and the all-pervading smell of sugar, Schultz's work evokes an immediate feeling of joy at a time when some are feeling gloomy.

She is happy to see people enjoying the work, and already planning her next neon world.

"I'm interested in those ideas that are optimistic, that people can aspire to something amazing or magical or wonderful," she said.

Pip and Pop's When Happiness Ruled is at the Perth Institute of Contemporary Arts until December 24.