Nigel Ip

I don’t follow The Beatles, so I knew nothing about Yoko Ono’s relationship with John Lennon; some hardcore fans believe she was responsible for ‘breaking up’ The Beatles. This episode of her life gets a dedicated mention in Tate Modern’s retrospective, which offers an intriguing overview of her conceptual and performative practice.

As other art enthusiasts probably did, my first awareness of Ono’s work was through Cut Piece, a performance piece in which she sat on a stage in a suit with a pair of scissors in front of her, inviting the audience to cut pieces of her clothing off. It’s a powerful work that foreshadows Marina Abramović’s Rhythm 0 10 years later as a social experiment to test the public’s willingness to humiliate someone in a violent act.

From what I could surmise from Ono’s diverse output represented in this exhibition, her practice was quite community-focused and participatory, imbuing them with spiritual concepts into a kind of life ritual. The Grapefruit series is perhaps the best demonstration of this, filled with all sorts of meditative instructions that occasionally require one or more participants to activate. I gave White Chess Set a try (‘For playing as long as you can remember where all your pieces are’); it was a hilarious adventure.

Similarly, Add Colour (Refugee Boat) is just a big white room inviting visitors to adorn its walls with blue marker pens. Overall, her conceptual prompts tend towards an appreciation of the little things in life and presentness. Fans of her music may also enjoy the little room where you can sit down and listen to her repertoire with headphones.

Like most performance-based exhibitions, this one takes some patience to contemplate its various messages with a positive outlook. I think it’s one that may offer many surprises about Yoko Ono on both sides of the music and/or art camp.

Yoko Ono: Music of the Mind runs from 15 February to 1 September 2024 at Tate Modern, London, https://www.tate.org.uk/