Art Research Communication

Joana Bastos: No Money, No Honey at Threshold artspace

Joana Bastos: No Money, No Honey

The first solo show in the UK by this critically acclaimed Portuguese artist. The third in a five-part ten month series of new commissions, exhibitions and events Portuguese Waves celebrating the vibrant Portuguese contemporary art culture.
Curated by Iliyana Nedkova and Filipa Oliveira
14 February – 13 March 2010
Open Monday to Saturday, 10am – 6pm or late on performance evenings. Admission always free
Threshold artspace , Perth Concert Hall, Mill Street, Perth PH1 5HZ, Scotland

‘Since 2007, Joana Bastos has challenged the Portuguese art scene with a series of provocative performances that explore the conventions of late-capitalist labor relations. The artist assumes the ordinary occupations of female workers—from blue-collar professionals to those in the service sector—and executes the routine duties of a given job description in situ. Merging the radical legacy of feminist art and the political practices of institutional critique, Bastos smartly blurs boundaries between the public and the private, fiction and reality, and aesthetics and ethnography.’ – Miguel Amado In Artforum: Critics´ Picks, Issue December 2009

For her solo exhibition No Money, No Honey at Perth’s Threshold artspace – her first in the UK – Bastos presents four new and recent works from the last three years in which the artist operates within performative platforms as an entertainer, cleaner, hostess and a babysitter. True to her preferred media of choice – women’s jobs – Bastos recreates these stereotypes as staged performances, as ironic ‘ready-mades’ questioning the agency and role of the artist in our globalised (art) world. The works also echo the notion of ‘carnivalesque gaiety’ with which anyone feels entitled to comment on areas outside of their expertise in the society of the spectacle as asserted by theorist Guy Debord. All new commissions and acquisitions are showing at the different ‘project rooms’ of the artspace including the Wave, Stage and Flush areas, as well as the artspace dedicated YouTube Channel.

Joana Bastos (born Lisbon, 1979 where she lives and works) graduated with a MFA Degree from Chelsea College of Art and Design, London, 2008 and a BA Hons Degree in Painting from University of Fine Arts, Lisbon, 2004. Her latest solo shows include: Ask me, Kusnthalle Lissabon, Lisbon, 2009; Black Journeys, Lagar do Azeite, Oeiras, 2006; 8&80, Instituto Camões, Luxembourg, 2006; Blindfolded, Way of Arts, Estoril, 2005; Ink, Lagar do Azeite, Oeiras, 2003. She also participated in a number of group shows including: Impossible Exchange, Frieze Projects, Frieze Art Fair, London, 2009; Entre o Céu e o Mar – Allgarve, CAV no Centro Cultural de Lagos, Lagos, 2009; Job Interviews, Battersea Art Centre, London, 2009; Propeller Island, South Kensington Artists Run Space, London, 2009; Employability, Chelsea College of Art and Design, London, 2008; 7 Artistas ao 10 Mês, Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian, Lisbon, 2008; Condensation I, Decima Gallery, London, 2008. Bastos’ practice is represented by Vera Cortês Art Agency. Her exhibition No Money, No Honey at Threshold artspace, Perth, 2010 is her first solo presentation in the UK.
www.joanabastos.com

Supported by the Calouste Gulbenkain Foundation, Instituto Camões Portugal of Portuguese Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Portuguese Arts Council Acordo Tripartido Fund