23rd November 1997 – 15th March 1998
This exhibition comprised a number of Ono’s works from the 1950’s to the time of the exhibition in the late 1990’s. This retrospective resulted in some of her most famous pieces from across this period being re-created specifically for the gallery – the original ladder John Lennon famously climbed up as part of Ono’s Ceiling Painting (Yes Painting) in 1966 again formed part of the work when it was reconstructed for Modern Art Oxford.
The exhibition as a whole looked to emphasise Ono’s position as an influential figure in the development of various international avant-garde movements. Famously influenced by Zen Buddhism, her work nevertheless played with ideas of disunity and inconclusiveness, albeit in frequently understated ways; AMAZE (1971), for example, invited viewers to walk into a perspex maze, only to find a toilet at its centre. Ono intended such a journey to metaphorically suggest the viewer’s journey through life. Subsequently, the exhibition was both playful and troubling, and indeed, with the broad spectrum of the art it included, hard to define. These principles, however, seemed to be Ono’s unifying intention.
