A Bristol musician and artist is bringing the art and film of Yoko Ono to Bristol for the very first time.
Yoko Ono is a world-renowned artist, singer, songwriter, performance artist and activist who has campaigned for peace throughout her life including, famously, Bed-In protests in the 1960s alongside her Beatle husband John Lennon.
Jimmy Galvin, a Bristol-based artist, composer and curator, has worked tirelessly to bring her work to the city where it will be displayed in the Georgian House from the end of September.
He says the exhibit, called Interventions/2, aims to bring Bristol's communities together and throw the spotlight onto Bristol's heritage and involvement with the Slave Trade, as well as to encourage people to see expression through art as a form of activism.
Mr Galvin said: "We live in an age where human trafficking is more prevalent than ever, so my aim is to make clear that the Slave Trade is not just a thing of the past but a modern human crisis – according to Amnesty International it’s at an all-time high – so having the voice of one of the most famous artist-activists in the world is a way to bring a new spotlight onto Bristol’s heritage and involvement with the Slave Trade and, as with all great art, it gives us permission to open dialogue and create a better understanding of ourselves and our city's past, as well as its future and what role we need it to perform."
The exhibition will be held in the Georgian House, a significant choice because the historic building was originally constructed around 1790 for wealthy sugar merchant John Pinney, a slave plantation owner. It is now furnished and displayed as a typical late 18th century town house.
Mr Galvin said the name Interventions/2 directly correlates with the decision to hold the exhibition in the Georgian House, as the project itself is an intervention, reclaiming the space in a new way to draw in a new audience to the venue.
He said: “For me, the Georgian House holds a special place as it was the first museum I ever visited. It was a place of refuge, but over the years the romanticism of the aesthetics started to fade as I began to do my own research and discovered its past, so the space took on a whole new meaning, forcing me to think about the context of these kinds of places, and not only what they mean to us as individuals, but more importantly what they stood for, and how their creation came about."
The exhibition will feature several of the iconic films Yoko Ono, now aged 86, made during the 1960s and early 1970s, such as Cut Piece (1964/5), Eyeblink (flux film no.9 and 15) 1966, Freedom (1971), Fly (1970 directed by John Lennon and Yoko Ono) as well as Sky TV (1966/2019), plus a more recent work entitled Arising, that will be an updated version for Bristol after it was first exhibited at The Venice Biennale in 2013, addressing the abuse of women.
Arising is a feminist work of art which shows silicon female bodies burned in the Venetian lagoon, evoking imagery of mythical phoenixes.
Wish Trees will form another key piece of the exhibition. These are participatory pieces in which visitors are asked to make a wish, write it on a piece of paper, fold it and tie it to the Wish Tree, ask their friends to do the same and then keep wishing until the branches are covered with wishes.
Curator Mr Galvin hopes the exhibition will draw people from across Bristol to begin a dialogue on the subject matter of Yoko's work as well as question the role of art in the digital world.
He said: "Art is the platform that enables everyone to join in the conversation and I believe it is the job of art to reach out to the broader communities and keep us all engaged."
He added: "The show's subtext theme is 'Art as Activism' - does art have a significant role to play any more in the new cultural landscape of social media? Or has the silent fascism of the corporate culture of consumerism finally taken over?
"We live in the age of the image, where technology has become the collective memory of total recall for us all. We can now start, stop, pause any given moment in our current personal existence, so where will we look for the authentication of our collective past?
"For many, cyberspace is a new reality, yet we can only bring the past into the future by engaging with the art that exists now, and this is why the Interventions/2 exhibition has come into fruition. It hopes to reignite the narrative of art as activism as we all have a voice, yet technology has somehow diminished the narrative for many people.
"It’s the art of 'doing' that addresses all political and social issues. Great art connects us to the act of social responsibility so we can make our communities stronger where the true possibility of art unfolds."
Yoko Ono is an artist whose thought-provoking work challenges people’s understanding of art and the world around them. From the beginning of her career, she was a Conceptualist whose work encompassed performance, instructions, film, music, and writing.
She continues to work tirelessly for peace with her Imagine Peace campaign.
The Yoko Ono exhibition runs from September 28 to December 31 at The Georgian House, 7 Great George Street, Bristol
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