DISCOVER MUSIC OF THE MIND AT TATE MODERN
Much more than a muse, this summer’s major retrospective focuses on Yoko Ono’s work as an artist and activist.
Conceived in close collaboration with Ono’s studio, it is the largest-ever exhibition on her life in the UK to date. Spanning seven decades, it traces the development of her multidisciplinary practice from the mid-1950s to now as she moved between Japan, the US and the UK – where she met her husband and longtime collaborator John Lennon.
Tate Modern curator Juliet Bingham, who worked on the exhibition alongside Patricia Dander, head of the curatorial department at Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen, writes in its catalogue: “Ono’s artwork can often take several forms: a score, a performance, an object, a film, music and audio, or as an event. Outlining her approach in a lecture in 1966, Ono commented that her early events had no ‘script’, but rather had ‘something that starts it moving – the closest word for it may be a “wish” or “hope”’ – and that transforms in the hands, minds and words of others. Transformation is a key aspect of Ono’s practice, with her instructions or scores operating as ‘seeds’, activated by the individual or collectively through mind and action.”
AN IMMERSIVE INVITATION
Her art invites everyone to get involved. Across the exhibition’s 200 works, you’ll find instruction pieces and scores, installations, films, music and photography. Every room has something you can do, from drawing on the walls and hammering in nails to writing wishes and messages of hope.
Bingham adds: “This exhibition opens with Ono’s greeting in Telephone Piece 1964, recorded 1971, and closes with WHISPER 2013, which was performed by Ono in her eightieth year at Sydney Opera House in Australia. Here, the artist’s powerful vocals echo with the words, ‘I wish... let me wish...’. Ono’s invitation to imagine and to whisper is a call to action, a provocation to change the world, one wish at a time.”
Yoko Ono: Music of the Mind runs until 1 September. Tickets are available at www.tate.org.uk.