The Honeymoon Suite is possibly Juno Calypso’s most startling photographic mission. Dressed in lurid pastels and a wig, Calypso’s one-woman tour of honeymoon hotels defies the typical perceptions of gender and identity through an edgy prism of wit, humour and courageous vulnerability.
Since 2011 Calypso has used a fictional alter ego named Joyce to “reenact the private underlife of a woman consumed by the laboured construct of femininity”[1]. The Honeymoon Suite is a continuation of the ‘Joyce’ series. In the Spring of 2015 Calypso spent a week posing as a travel writer at a couples-only honeymoon resort in Pennsylvania USA. She was granted keys for every suite in the resort where she photographed herself alone as Joyce.
Juno Calypso’s disconcerting way of presenting the body, generally her own body, to the public puts two fingers up at the male gaze and subverts Jean Claude Forest’s Barbella as a psychedelic comic-strip heroine. Barbarella was a hedonistic, free-spirited, interplanetary astronaut travelling the universe in search of love whereas Calypso’s Joyce protaganist is searching for something darker and more challenging.
Juno Calypso was born in London in 1989. She developed Joyce in 2012,channelling suburban isolation by placing her in garish sets furnished with pastel curtains and plastic food. Her degree show was awarded both the Hotshoe Portfolio Award and the Michael Wilson Photographic Prize. In 2013 The Catlin Art Guide featured Calypso as one of 40 of the most promising new artists in the UK, subsequently shortlisting her for the 2013 Catlin Art Prize. She was British Journal of Photography, IPA Series prize winner in 2016 and her work has been featured in The Guardian, Dazed & Confused and in the projects section of the British Journal of Photography.
The Honeymoon Suite is presented by Golden Thread Gallery in collaboration with Belfast Photo Festival and runs until 22 July 2017.
There will be a pre-launch tour of the exhibition with Juno Calypso at 5.30pm on Thursday 1st June. Booking essential. Light refreshments will be served. If you would like to attend the tour or launch please RSVP to ruth@goldenthreadgallery.co.uk
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