Yoko Ono: IMAGINE PEACE Featuring John & Yoko’s Year of Peace [Jersey City, NY, USA]

Yoko Ono exhibit opening at NJCU, Jersey City

An opening reception will be held from 3 to 6 this afternoon at New Jersey City University in Jersey City for an exhibit of works by Yoko Ono that recall her and John Lennon’s calls for peace.

Ono spent the most public years of her life promoting a message of peace and love with her husband, John Lennon. With her current art exhibition, “Yoko Ono Imagine Peace featuring John and Yoko’s Year of Peace,” it seems that some things will never change.

“(John and I) always wanted to make sure that the message for world peace was present in our works in some way,” Ono said in an exclusive e-mail interview with The Jersey Journal. “I want people to know that he cared about the world. That was always in his mind.”

The exhibition also holds a special place with Dr. Midori Yoshimoto, gallery director and associate professor of art at NJCU.

“I studied her work and have known her for about 10 years. This is a strong exhibition focusing on peace and love which is very necessary, especially in this time of political turmoil and everlasting conflicts around the world,” she said. “It’s also a boosting up of the spirit before the election. There’s no particular political side expressed through the work, but the message of exhibition is to promote peace.”

Curated by Dr. Kevin Concannon and John Noga of the University of Akron, the exhibition is divided between two galleries. The Harold B. Lemmerman Gallery will feature works that provide historical background and context to the couple’s peace activism that started with “Bed in for Peace,” which is where Lennon and Ono invited the media to videotape and broadcast them in bed for a week during their honeymoon in 1969.

“The message (was) just ‘Imagine Peace.’ In the ’60s and ’70s, we got in bed and explained (it for) days and days, and people still didn’t get it,” Ono said. ” ‘Imagine Peace’ is like a simple concept we all carry now.”

Photographs of the couple’s “War is Over” billboards from cities around the world, as well as documentation and videos, are featured in the Lemmerman Gallery.

NJCU’s Visual Arts Gallery will feature Ono’s interactive works. “Imagine Peace” is a series of maps from around the world and viewers are invited to take a stamp from a pedestal and mark on the maps a place they wish for peace.

“I included Jersey City and Hudson County maps among the international maps ranging from the Middle East to Europe,” Yoshimoto said, explaining that Ono would then take the maps and add them to the collection she has.

There’s also “Play It By Trust,” which is a completely white, oversized chess set that sits on the floor.

“There’s no black and white. Viewers are invited to play but because there are no enemies, they have to play with their imagination,” Yoshimoto said. “I hope the viewers can take a moment to think about the meaning of our participation in current politics and look up to Yoko and John for what they did in the ’60s.”

The exhibit runs through Dec. 8, the 28th anniversary of Lennon’s death. As for Ono, how has she been able to continue promoting peace and love after her husband’s murder?

“I don’t think I’m doing it without John. John, with his message and songs, is still here helping me.”

by Rebecca Markley, The Jersey Journal 

 

IMAGINE PEACE in New Jersey

 

Yoko Ono IMAGINE PEACE, featuring John and Yoko’s Year of Peace
Visual Arts Gallery of New Jersey City University
100 Culver Avenue, 2039 Kennedy Boulevard, Jersey City, New Jersey
27 Oct 2008 – 8 Dec 2008

Curated by Dr. Kevin Concannon, University of Akron traveling from Bucknell University, Lewisburg, PA

 

Preview Reception: Oct. 26 from 3:00pm to 6:00pm

(The reception will start in the Lemmerman Gallery)

Film screenings (Visual Arts Building Auditorium)
The U.S. vs. John Lennon, November 6 at 5:00 p.m
Films by Yoko Ono, November 18, at 6:00 p.m.

Lecture (Hepburn Hall, Room 202)
Yoko Ono Imagining Peace, 1966–2008
Dr. Kevin Concannon
December 8 at noon

YOKO ONO IMAGINE PEACE, featuring John & Yoko’s Year of Peace, curated by Kevin Concannon and John Noga for the Mary Schiller Myers School of Art at The University of Akron in Ohio, is concluding its tour at NJCU Galleries after traveling to University of Texas San Antonio Art Gallery in San Antonio, Texas and Samek Art Gallery in Bucknell University in Lewisburg, Pennsylvania.

The exhibition 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.

he 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.

The catalog is available through your donation to the NJCU Foundation in the amount of $40 or more ($20 tax deductible) plus shipping & handling charge ($8). Please send a check addressed to the NJCU Foundation to: Midori Yoshimoto, Art Department, NJCU, 2039 Kennedy Blvd. Jersey City, NJ 07305. The catalogs will also be available at galleries.