YOKO ONO IMAGINE PEACE

YOKO ONO IMAGINE PEACE

Curated by Kevin Concannon and John Noga; Originally organized by the Myers School of Art University of Akron

Organized by the Samek Art Gallery

August 25 - October 8, 2008

Yoko Ono: IMAGINE PEACE, featuring John & Yoko's Year of Peace, focuses on the thematic ideals of peace and love, and follows the work of Yoko Ono and John Lennon chronologically as solo artists, as a couple in the 1960s, and also includes Ono's recent solo works.

Yoko Ono’s career has spanned six decades. Beginning in the 1950s, she has been a pioneer of developing new art forms, moving between art forms, and moving freely between genres from avant-garde to pop. In the 1960s, Ono was an important Fluxus, Performance Art and conceptual Art.

Yoko Ono Imagine Peace will showcase interactive works by Ono which demonstrate her long-standing ambition to involve individuals in the process of achieving peace through the power of imagination. The exhibition will include installations that are designed to help visitors spread the message of love and peace worldwide through use of stamps, postcards, flashlights, and buttons (see image of Ono stamping “imagine peace” on a map in 2006 Belgium exhibition, above). These works include: Play it by Trust; Imagine Peace; Onochord; and the Imagine Peace Tower, in Reykjavik, Iceland, which was dedicated on John Lennon’s birthday, October 9, 2007.

The exhibition will also include photo-documentation of the world-wide broadcast of the Beatles All You Need is Love, and the accompanying parade of signs with the word “love” in several languages; Ono’s all white chess piece, Play It by Trust; Lennon’s lithographs from the Bag One portfolio; Collaborative works, such as their Acorn Event, Bed-In, and the international advertising campaign War is Over! will be represented by films, large-scale photomurals, and lithographs. Screenings of Ono’s films are planned as well.