The current show, curated by Jimmy Galvin, in The Georgian House Museum, has aspects of this, but added to it, has Wish Trees, and Yoko Ono’s more recent work, ARISING, which incorporates a filmed element, and addresses the abuse of women by men. The curator, Jimmy Galvin, expresses his view of Yoko Ono’s exhibition: “It is a way to bring a new spotlight onto Bristol’s heritage and involvement with the slave trade, and as with all great art, it gives us permission to open dialogue and create a better understanding of ourselves and our city’s past, as well as its future, and what role we need it to perform. Art is the platform that enables everyone to join in the conversation, and I believe it is the job of art to reach out to the wider communities and keep us all engaged.” Yoko Ono is an artist whose thought-provoking work challenges people’s understanding of art and the world around them.
From the beginning of her career, she was a Conceptualist whose work encompassed performance, instructions, film, music, and writing. Ono was born in Tokyo in 1933, and moved to New York in 1953, following her studies in philosophy in Japan. By the late 1950s, she had become part of New York Cityʼs vibrant avant-garde activities. In 1960, she opened her Chambers Street loft, where she and La Monte Young presented a series of radical performances and exhibited realizations of some of her early conceptual works. In 1961, she had a one-person show of her Instruction Paintings at George Maciunas’ legendary AG Gallery in New York, and later that year, she performed a solo concert at Carnegie Recital Hall of revolutionary works involving movement, sound, and voice. In 1962, she returned to Tokyo, where, at the Sogetsu Art Center, she extended her New York performance and exhibited her Instructions for Paintings. In 1964, Ono performed Cut Piece in Kyoto and Tokyo, and published Grapefruit, a book of her collected conceptual instruction pieces. At the end of that year, she returned to New York. In 1965, she performed Cut Piece during her concert at Carnegie Recital Hall, Bag Piece during a solo event for the Perpetual Fluxus Festival, and she performed Sky Piece to Jesus Christ during the Fluxorchestra concert at Carnegie Recital Hall that September. In 1966, she made the first version of Film No. 4 (Bottoms) , and realized a collaborative installation The Stone, at the Judson Gallery. In the fall of 1966, she was invited to take part in the Destruction in Art Symposium in London, and later that year, held one-person exhibitions at the Indica Gallery, and the Lisson Gallery the following year. During this period, she also performed a number of concerts throughout England. In 1969, together with John Lennon, she realized Bed-In, and the worldwide War Is Over! (if you want it) campaign for peace. Yoko Ono travels annually to Iceland for the lighting of her IMAGINE PEACE TOWER, which she created in 2007 as a permanent installation on Viðey Island, Iceland. She continues to work tirelessly for peace with her IMAGINE PEACE campaign. Today, Ono is widely recognized for her groundbreaking films and her radical music, recordings, concerts, as well as her performance art. Her films Fly, “RAPE”, Film No. 4 to name a few, are considered classics of 20th century film, and her music has finally been acknowledged as the genesis of much of the new wave of musical forms that have circled the world. Ono has exhibited her work throughout the world, including major touring exhibitions, biennales and triennales. In 2009, she received the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement from the Venice Biennale. Her major exhibitions have included YES YOKO ONO (2000 – 2001), organized by the Japan Society in New York, traveling throughout the United States, Japan, Canada and Korea, and YOKO ONO: HALF-A-WIND SHOW – A RETROSPECTIVE (2013) at the Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt, traveling to the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art in Denmark, Kunsthalle Krems in Austria, and Guggenheim Bilbao. YOKO ONO: ONE WOMAN SHOW, 1960-1971 opened in May 2015 at The Museum of Modern Art in New York, followed by one-person exhibitions at Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo (MOT), and FAURSCHOU FOUNDATION BEIJING. In 2016, Ono’s first French retrospective, YOKO ONO: Lumière de L’aube took place at MAC Lyon, and Ono’s permanent installation, SKYLANDING, was unveiled in Chicago’s Jackson Park; later that year, a one-person exhibition was held at the Macedonian Museum of Contemporary Art in Thessaloniki, Greece. In 2017, Ono’s works were featured in YOKO ONO: Four Works for Washington and the World at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Prospect.4 in New Orleans, Tate Modern, C3A Centro de Creación Contemporánea, in Cordoba, Spain, in addition to her one-person exhibition, YOKO ONO: TRANSMISSION at Kunsthal Charlottenborg. In 2018, a new version of Ono’s work, ONOCHORD, was presented at Henningsvaer Lighthouse in Lofoten, Norway, and further exhibitions in 2018 – 2019 include Double Fantasy – John & Yoko at the Museum of Liverpool, Catastrophe and the Power of Art at Mori Art Museum in Tokyo, and Buddha’s Life, Path to the Present at De Nieuwe Kerk in Amsterdam. One-person exhibitions in 2019 include YOKO ONO: LOOKING FOR . . . in Cambridge, England, YOKO ONO: PEACE is POWER at Museum der bildenden Künste (MdbK), Leipzig, YOKO ONO: ARISING at School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Yoko Ono: Poetry, Painting, Music, Objects, Events and Wish Trees at Poetry Foundation in Chicago, and YOKO ONO: LIBERTÉ CONQUÉRANTE/GROWING FREEDOM at Fondation Phi pour l’art contemporain in Montreal, Canada. Yoko Ono’s BELLS FOR PEACE opening event of Manchester International Festival 2019, YOKO ONO: INTERVENTIONS/2 at The Georgian House Museum, Bristol, England, and YOKO ONO: REMEMBERING THE FUTURE at the Everson Museum of Art, Syracuse, New York, are amongst forthcoming exhibitions in 2019.