Yoko Ono: Music of the Mind | First Impressions

I talk to Richard Layne on ‘Yoko Ono: Music of the Mind’, currently on at Tate Modern. You might recognise Richard from our podcast, THINKING ALOUD ABOUT FILM. What you might not know is that he is a long-time fan of Yoko Ono and one of the most knowledgeable people on her work as an artist and performer. In this podcast, Richard, compares this exhibition, billed as ‘the largest ever undertaken in the UK’ on the work of Yoko Ono, and compares it to the many others he’s attended. We talk of how he became a fan, her various types of work, the performance art, the conceptual art, her books of instructions, the connection to Fluxus. We also touch on her collaborations with some of the key figures of mid-twentieth century art (John Cage, Robert Rauschenberg, John Lennon) and how her work prefigures that of contemporary artists such as Marina Abramovíc. Our conversation broadly follows the flow of the exhibition itself, so I’ve included photographs from the exhibition in the blog so the listener might more clearly follow the points of conversation. Richard is very illuminating on why Yoko Ono is one of those figures that keep getting re-discovered periodically, on her extensive influence in various domains of art, from the gallery to punk, and on how she is a wonderful conduit to chance meetings with The Pet Shop Boys.

The podcast may be listened to here: