YOKO ONO
Looking for
AS THE WORK OF YOKO ONO CONTINUES ITS TAKEOVER OF CAMBRIDGE, RUTHIE COLLINS FINDS OUT MORE ABOUT THE ARTIST’S SPECIAL RELATIONSHIP WITH THE CITY
series of instructions, first published in 1964 in key conceptual art book, Grapefruit . When first exhibited in New York and then Tokyo in the early 1960s, the instructions were arguably the world’s first ever conceptual art exhibition – participatory text-based works that invite your own thoughts and actions to become art. Try some of them out to connect with the natural beauty of summer: and the sky. ‘Sit under a blue sky/Keep your head open and empty/Let ideas come into you/Cherish them.’ ( Sky Piece VIII ). One of Yoko Ono’s most famous works, ongoing installation Wish Tree, is also on show. Reading the wishes of visitors, hung onto the trees in the courtyard next to the gallery, is a hopeful and sometimes poignant experience – whether a wish to make the ‘grieving of families easier’ or for ‘joy’, or to ‘sit calmly with my own thoughts’. Creating your own is a joyous act of optimism – a reminder of Ono’s belief that ‘you change the world by being yourself.’ There’s also the chance to buy your own Yoko Ono ‘piece’, Air Dispenser (1971/20190 – air in a capsule, again a whimsical nod to humanity’s continued commodification of our natural resources. Or why not play monochrome chess, with Play It By Trust aka White Chess Set (1966 )? A hit with surprise visitor Ai Wei Wei, who came to the exhibition’s opening event in
June, this minimalist-inspired work is also influenced by Zen Buddhism. Competition is subverted into an act of play and collaboration. “The problem is not how to become different or unique, but how to share an experience, how to be the same,” as Yoko Ono said. This exhibition at the Heong Gallery is just one part of Yoko Ono: Looking For… , a city-wide takeover of Cambridge that brings 90 works by Yoko Ono to the city. Opening on 2 March of this year, with an unveiling of a plaque to ‘Yoko Ono and John Lennon’ at Lady Mitchell Hall, the concept was inspired by curator G. The
ll my life, I have been in love with the sky,’ (Yoko Ono). A symbol for peace, freedom, the eternal and unknowable, the sky has long been a recurring motif in the work of pioneering conceptual artist Yoko Ono. Yoko Ono: Sky Pieces , at Heong Gallery, Downing College, which runs until October this year, sees her bringing the sky into the gallery – with Sky TV (1966/2019) , an installation livestreaming the sky through 25 screens – amplifying, with powerful impact, the shifting sky, the movements of birds, bees and clouds. Somehow eerie too, perhaps symptomatic of humanity’s mechanised, sometimes disconnected way of experiencing the natural world. Watch out also for Ono’s
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