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DECEMBER 30, 2008
Yoko Ono
By Gemma Winter
SATURDAY
On a cold December evening whilst most of the nation are sitting in glee watching the X Factor finals, I'm standing stroking a pair of silicon lips, whilst my partner in crime, the photographer Herod McHugh roughly grabs a silicon breast before snapping away at the chopped up cadaver. It's all part of the Yoko Ono retrospective 'Between the Sky and my Head' her largest exhibit of work in Europe for a decade. At the BALTIC we are shuffled between floors, ushered by staff using the service elevator. The security around the media preview and the following drinks reception is unprecedented, heaven forbid any of the hoi polloi were to stumble into the event.
Staring at a blank Sony TV the caption reads "Sky TV 2008", one of the Baltic crew Maria points out the screen isn't broken it is after all night time. The idea for which came from Yoko back in the 60s, Ono explains , "Well I do that all the time, in 1966 I was living in a small apartment, the window had a bad paint job over it, I opened it, it was the kind of backyard you do not want to see, so I thought oops. Life is in the sky so I put the Sky TV there, which by the way i did not know how to do it, it was just conceptual." It was at this time she started to write her conceptual artworks on the walls, she says "I also started to make little remarks about the room, it became beautiful." The handwritten scrawl which adorns the gallery walls was first published in "Grapefruit" and based on the idea of Zen Buddism, turning in on yourself.
Waiting for the drinks reception to commence McHugh and I partake in participatory artworks "Wishtrees" and "My Mommy Loves Me" unfortunately "Skyladders" is not interactive, due to fucking health and safety, in case some idiot falls off a ladder and decides to sue. Sky is a key central theme of Ono's work, she comments "I really think we have an incredible connection to the sun, sometimes I think we all come from another planet. So we miss the home town, we have a different concept of the sky. Sky's there (she points up to the ceiling) we always say, the sky is up there! but where does it end? (she lowers her arm down to the floor) Ah! it ends at the feet. So actually all of us are sky people who are walking on earth, but everyday we are walking in the sky; so naturally I am going to have feelings for the sky.
Godfrey Woolsdale, the latest in a long line of BALTIC directors makes a long winded seven minute speech to the cognoscenti, Ono then proclaims" A conceptual toast to Gateshead for being so brave and wise with the projects. "Thank you so much Gateshead." After a few obligatory photos McHugh seizes the moment, leaving me stranded glass in one hand Dictaphone in the other. Ono's minders eye McHugh, threatening him "Are you a professional photographer" he replies "Yeah, I'm with Gemma" - pointing at me - "She works for KY..." I butt in "KCTV an avant garde arts website" directing my comment at Ono. In his broadest Scouse tones McHugh apologises to Yoko "Sorry, I was just being cheeky" which makes her laugh, however her security do not. They tell her we aren't allowed to take any snaps, but thankfully McHugh isn't kicked out either.
After filling up on free booze, I notice the "Imagine Peace" banner hanging outside on the external wall of the gallery. A real possibility for Ono who insists "It's not a passive process at all, by imagining the act and doing the act, you are drawing in all the elements in, in order to come out. It's a very powerful thing to do, each inanimate object has peace, P-E-A-C-E in it, and were saying imagine peace by bringing all that out... My feelings is that urm, artists unlike politicians can express themselves, and through expressing themselves, and through expressing ourselves we can change the world. We have to be careful tho, because if you do something badly it will effect the world. It will change your life accordingly.
SUNDAY
You'd be forgiven for thinking the January sales had come early with a scrum trying to force their way into the auditorium. eventually the gallery staff give in opening the doors, I find myself sandwiched between two middle aged art connoisseurs. curators Thomas Kellein and Jon Hendricks are sat cross-legged on the stage enjoying a game of chess, a scale version of Ono's "Play It By Trust." After what seems like an eternity and another speech by Godfrey Woolsdale, Ono finally appears to rapturous applause the likes of which are only heard on Tyneside on match days. Ono seizes the stage, and a nearby Phillppe Stark chair announcing "This is an object most people know as a chair, well I really don't know what it is but I want to create a good relationship with this object." This is followed by five minutes of the elderly artist tapping and drumming the perspex surface, before grappling with, crawling underneath and then finally waltzing with the object. when the spectacle is over, she casually announces "OK" to much ecstatic applause.
The promo video for "Walking on Thin Ice" is projected onto the wall, whilst speakers blast out the electro classic. Ono then begins to mimic her movements in the video, striding across the stage. "Throwing the dice in the air ..." She then grabs chess pieces that lay close by, and starts throwing them into the crowd; both of the forty somethings either side of me suddenly dive onto the floor, rummaging in the dim light for the odd rook and pawn. Ono continues to walk across the stage changing her hat intermittently from Fedora to a 60s style corduroy cap. everyone around me seems so infatuated by her performance, certainly not the most conventional of artists talks, then again Yoko Ono never was.
Art gallery staff then start wrapping blue balls of wool around the bemused spectators, as two chairs and a small occasional table appear on stage. "OK I'm sure you have many many questions" Ono enthuses, joined on stage by Aleasndro Vincentelli. He starts off the talk "I'd like to read you a quote from Tony Elliot in '68, a quote from you. "A blind man says what's an elephant, you lead him to the elephant, and let him grasp the tail, and you say that's an elephant. Exhibiting material in a gallery is like an elephants tail, and the larger part is in your mind, but you have to give it a tail to lead into it." A perplexed Ono responds "When did I say that?" Vincentelli attempts to clarify "1968, to Tony Elliot." It only seems to confuse the artist more "I don't remember saying that! ... Oh well you know it was a long time ago. I guess it's because everybody has a different take on their work and how to be understood. My parents have a totally different view to me, well for a while. Most people do."
The floor is opened up to the audience, whose questions seems lost in translation for Ono, who asks them to be repeated, it's no use. Alessandro has to translate from the thick Geordie brogue. An audience member, who is clearly a Beatles fan asks "I wonder if you could say a little bit about the public perception of yourself and therefore your art and music, in different territories - in Japan, North America, Europe, and how does that influence the way you approach presenting your art and music in those areas." She replies "Well I just do my best, I can not totally control my fate, and I understand that. It's just that i do my best." Undeterred he presses on "So does that mean you are aware of the public perception? It doesn't impact on your art?" She responds jokingly "Yes we are all aware of that, I'm not retarded or anything." She gets a few laughs, but mainly gasps and sharp intakes of breath from the PC middle class audience.
Its at this point Alessandro takes over again. He asks her to talk about the Acorn event which took place in Coventry back in '68. She enthuses "In acorn event we decide to plant two acorns, one in the east and one in the west. So we dug a hole and i put one inside, John immediately put his right next to mine. So i said "OK", I understood what he had done. With our love, or whatever we had actually shrunk the distance between east and west. John smiled, it was the front yard of a church, and er, by the way they did not want us in the group show. I had John with me, and they did not want us to be in the show because we were not married. We exercised the particular event with great weight and dignity, John stood up, and like a priest, he said 'We have now planted to acorns, and this is to show that east is west and west is east.' He said it like that, as if there were two hundred people around us, actually it was just us and an assistant. Another two weeks, and I don't even think that we found out in the papers that somebody stole the acorns. this year because of the 40th anniversary, they asked me to come back. i said I'm not coming unless they invite the heads of the Jewish, Muslim and Buddhist religions, they have to be there. I thought they were not going to do that, they are so Christian but they did. At the ceremony we all expected the priest to make some kind of blessing, but there was silence, he just kinds nudged me, oh OK and I blessed it all. I asked him why he didn't say anything, he told me he didn't want to offend the heads of other religions."
At the end of the talk, the mass exodus begins into Baltic Square for the Onochord event. Where the repetition of light is used by the artist to spell 'I love you' or by flashlight * ** ***. Yoko appears on a makeshift plywood and scaffold platform, Maganalight in hand. She instructs the crowd to take their lights and send messages of love across the Tyne to Newcastle. Telling the participants "When you go home, tell your loved one you love them. You're not just telling them, your telling the world, and the universe." Deep, but then again Yoko Ono always was.
YOKO ONO
BETWEEN THE SKY AND MY HEAD
FREE ENTRY
MONDAY - SUNDAY 10.00 - 18.00
BALTIC
GATESHEAD QUAYS,
SOUTH SHORE ROAD,
GATESHEAD.
RUNS UNTIL THE 13TH MARCH 2009.
Gemma Winter.
Links
GEMMA WINTER
BALTIC
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Photographer Herod McHugh
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