Gender and art

Renowned Portuguese contemporary artist Joana Vasconcelos showcases her seductive and subversive large-scale sculptures for an exclusive site-specific exhibition at Manchester Art Gallery.

Manchester Art Gallery

through June 1, 2014.

http://www.manchestergalleriestimemachine.org/

From 15 February 2014, Manchester Art Gallery will stage the UK’s most ambitious exhibition of works by Portuguese contemporary artist Joana Vasconcelos. Fresh from her success representing Portugal at the 55th Venice Biennale, Vasconcelos will bring her seductive and subversive large-scale sculptures to Manchester for an exclusive site specific exhibition. This major new show features over twenty of the Portuguese artist’s most significant sculptures, which fill our main exhibition spaces, adorn the outside of our building and permeate the whole gallery. It includes new and recent works – most on show in the UK for the first time.. The exhibition will include new and recent works, the majority of which are previously unseen in the UK. 

Joana Vasconcelos, Time Machine

Manchester Art Gallery, from 15 febr. 2014

Château de Versailles is showing "feminist" sculpture by artist Joana Vasconcelos. "Vasconcelos at Versailles" fills the heritage site with feathered helicopters, giant stilettos made from saucepans and huge porcelain lobsters.

Joana Vasconcelos, War Games, 2011.

Joana Vasconcelos brings her eccentric installations to Manchester this month – assuming they all fit in…

Lisbon artist Joana Vasconcelos makes iconic objects for a world that could never exist. By extracting immediately recognisable forms from their context – often supersizing them, and covering them in embellishments freighted with significance – she transforms them into curiously powerful spectacles. Vasconcelos is also an artist whose work takes on preconceived notions of gender and woman’s labour. She loves working with textiles, and her personal preoccupations include machine-powered sculptures and handicraft.

Joana  Vasconcelos - Time Machine

15 February - 1 June 2014

Manchester Art Gallery

http://www.manchestergalleries.org/

'Lusitana,’ by Portuguese sculptor Joana Vasconcelos, winds its way down four flights of open space in Tel Aviv Museum, its tail and huge limbs spreading in all directions.

Currently suspended in the Tel Aviv Museum is an installation called “Lusitana,” created by Portugese sculptor Joana Vasconcelos. The body of Lusitana is covered in various colored cloth patches. She is a Valkyrie, a female figure from Norse mythology. Her body winds its way down four flights of an open space that makes up the “waterfall of light.” Her tail and huge limbs spread in all directions, reaching into exhibit spaces on all levels of the museum.

Vasconcelos’ Valkyrie is powerful and terrifying, yet light and amusing at the same time. This work, designed especially for the Tel Aviv Museum, is part of a series of Valkyries that Vasconcelos started to work on in 2004. In Norse mythology, these female figures determine the outcome of battles, helping some warriors and hurting others, deciding who shall die. They also accompany the fallen heroes to the halls of Valhalla. The Valkyries, who have gone through many transformations over the years, are entities associated with battles and death, as well as salvation and grace.