I first encountered Yoko Ono while on “wish tree duty” during my 2008 internship at the Peggy Guggenheim Museum in Venice. Each morning, before the gallery opened its doors, interns would sit around the library table and painstakingly cut out paper tags, ready to be inscribed with visitors’ wishes. The bundle of freshly cut tags was taken and placed next to the designated tree in the Guggenheim garden. At day’s end, tags would be harvested from the choked branches and express posted to Ono in New York.
I was intrigued when I learned that Wish Trees “made especially for Australian audiences”1 were planned for War is Over (if you want it), a major exhibition of Ono’s work currently on show at Sydney’s Museum of Contemporary Art. How would the conceptual work reflect its Australian context, I wondered, and how might it be different from its earlier Venice incarnation? Wish Tree for Sydney features lemon-scented eucalypts, installed in Catherine Lassen’s beautifully designed circular planters, but is otherwise entirely the same work displayed in Venice. Little scope has been provided for genuine engagement with an Australian audience and setting.
Upon entering the exhibition, you first encounter Cut Piece (1964). The artist sits on a stage while audience members cut away her clothes, eventually leaving her bare. A dual screen video juxtaposes an early performance in New York with a much later performance in Paris. One of her seminal works, Cut Piece introduced Ono to the world as a brave conceptual artist, before her name became synonymous with breaking up the Beatles. Immediately to the left of Cut Piece is a room displaying videos of Ono and John Lennon. Presented is a mix of Fluxus films, including Film No. 4 (Bottoms), and what seem to be home videos of the couple. These videos allow a peek inside John and Yoko’s life, feeding our endless fascination with celebrity.
It is difficult to distinguish Ono’s prominence as an artist from the notoriety derived from her relationship to Lennon. And Ono willfully promotes this entanglement. The entire exhibition is haunted by Lennon’s ghost, from his bloodied glasses, displayed in Family Album, to the exhibition’s title, taken from their famous “Bed Ins” protesting the Vietnam War. War Is Over is overshadowed by the past; a large portion of the work was first displayed during the 1960s and 70s, and the exhibition is steeped in that period’s cultural movements and ideologies.
“I’d like a single plum, floating in perfume, served in a man’s hat.” (line by a Yoko Ono-type character in Homer’s Barbershop Quartet —The Simpsons Season 5, Episode 1)
Conceptual art is a cerebral construct. In theory it can travel anywhere and be reproduced in any context. The problem with Ono’s work is that it carries so much baggage. The history and fame of the artist are inseparable from the work. In the installation Telephone in Maze, a perspex maze conceals a telephone at its centre. Viewers hover around the telephone with an air of expectation, hoping that they will be the lucky ones to receive Ono’s call. An excited docent tells me that the artist has rung nearly every day; in France she only rang twice.
A nostalgia trip for its visitors, War is Over does little to establish the ongoing relevance of Ono’s art. Eschewing the protests, wars, crises and politics of the present, the artist obsessively retraces her past, so although this is never stated by its curators, it is difficult to perceive War is Over as anything other than a retrospective.
War is over (if you want it): Yoko Ono is on at the MCA Sydney, 15 November 2013 – 23 February 2014.
Rachel Kent, Chief Curator, MCA