The Tate Modern is to represent the unprecedented work of Yoko Ono in February 2024. Covering over seven decades of the artist’s showmanship, there will be a theme of the mindset that brought the collection together. Echoing her expressionist pathway there will be more than 200 works including installations, films, music, and photography. The Tate writes that it will reveal a radical approach to language, art and participation that continues to speak to the present moment.
“Apple”
Her avant-garde creativity has been shaped through moving in artistic circles in Tokyo and New York and the exhibition starts with her early pivotal roles defined in “instructions”. She takes a humorous attitude to working with the mind, asking her subject to “listen to a heartbeat” and “step in all puddles in the city”. Her craftmanship expresses a gratitude for life and each parody is a moment shared by the mind of the artist. The typescript draft of Ono’s anthology “Grapefruit” will be displayed for the first time at the Tate Modern with her instructions written between 1953 and 1964.
The centre of the exhibition will reflect Ono’s five year stay in London from 1966, when she met artists including her husband and collaborator John Lennon. Key features are abstract in the sense that it paints a picture in a stream of consciousness like “sky” which has been ever present in Ono’s life, being a child fleeing the war in Japan, where she found comfort and solace in her core. This collection features Ono’s 1966 SKY TV broadcast of the sky above the Tate Modern.
Ono’s most famous campaign reflects her mentality when she and her late husband sent acorns to world leaders and did a billboard campaign of “War is Over” in 1969. Her work has been a constant evolving patter of humanitarianism and a play on the attention of the beholder. The exhibition reflects the interaction of Ono’s mantras and in this exhibition The Tate has taken its title from Ono’s Music in the Mind concerts and events in London and Liverpool in 1966 and 1967.
Yoko Ono: Music of The Mind is running from 15th February 2024 until 1st September 2024. Tate Members get unlimited free entry to all Tate Exhibitions.
