Juno Calypso: The Honeymoon Suite

Photograph Description 1
From the series 'Joyce'. Commissioned in 2013 by The Catlin Art Prize, to support new artists in the UK to continue making work after graduation.

Photograph Description 2
Objects once perceived as radical, innovative, fun and nutritious – an electronic anti-wrinkle mask, computer equipment from the 1980s, baby oil, a tin of cold meat – have become joyless and oppressive. Joyce appears alone, consumed by artifice. Her glazed appearance acting as a mirror to the exhaustion felt whilst bearing the dead weight of constructed femininity.

Photograph Description 3
In May 2015 I spent a week alone at a couples-only resort in Pennsylvania, to continue a series of staged self-portraits I began in 2011. With a suitcase of wigs and wedding lingerie, I booked myself into the Honeymoon Suite and remained there to produce new images and videos.

Photograph Description 4
From 'The Honeymoon Suite' series. The idea always starts with the location – finding somewhere with a time-warp feel. It begins with an appreciation of 1960s pink decor, but also ends up as an awkward social encounter. I like to explore those feelings – seduction, solitude, desire, disappointment.

Photograph Description 5
From 'The Honeymoon Suite' series.

Photographer's Profile
Juno Calypso is a 2012 graduate of the BA Photography course at LCC, where she began a series of staged self-portraits, disguised as a fictional character named Joyce. Confining herself to rented bedrooms and honeymoon suites, Calypso performs solitary studies into modern rituals of seduction and the laboured construction of femininity.