A new exhibition aims to bring Yoko Ono's art out of John Lennon's shadow
ABC News
Before there was John and Yoko, there was just Yoko Ono
LONDON -- Before there was John and Yoko — and after — there was just Yoko Ono.
The Japanese-American artist became a global celebrity through her marriage to John Lennon, her partner for more than a decade until his murder in 1980, as well as her collaborator on peace-protest “bed-ins” and in the Plastic Ono Band.
Yet that period forms just a small part of an exhibition opening this week at the Tate Modern gallery in London. One of the largest shows of Ono’s work ever mounted, it includes seven decades of work by the artist, who turns 91 on Sunday.
More than 200 artworks — including film, music, soundscapes, paintings, drawings and sculptures — trace Ono’s career from the 1950s and 1960s New York, where her apartment became a hangout for bohemian artists, to Japan, where she brought together artists from east and west.
Then it’s on to London, where Ono met the movers and shakers of Swinging Sixties counterculture — including, fatefully, Lennon, who came to see her show at a London gallery.
