Yoko Ono (Japan)
Intention to fly [or] Attention! To: Fly
Cardiff, Reardon Smith Lecture Theatre, National Museum of Wales
14 June 1968
- For half an hour last night 200 people sat waiting for the ‘happening’ promised at Cardiff’s Reardon Smith Lecture Theatre by the Japanese avant garde artist, Yoko Ono.
Then they realised that it had ‘happened’. A huge photograph of Miss Ono staring limply from the stage of the lecture theatre was the evening’s entertainment for which the organisers - the 56 Group of Welsh Artists - had paid 50 guineas.
Earlier in the evening a chauffeur-driven car had delivered two photographs and a one word message, ‘Fly’, to Mr. Keith Richardson Jones, lecturer at Newport College of Art, who was waiting outside the lecture theatre for Miss Ono to arrive.
As the audience, mainly art students, waited for the Japanese artist - who has been involved in ‘happenings’ all over the world - to arrive, Mr. Richardson Jones carried the 2ft. square portrait on to the stage and popped it up on a piano.
It was 40 minutes before the audience realised that the happening had happened and it was time to go home. As they left they were refunded their 5s. entrance fees.
But the organisers were quite satisfied that they had received value for money. ‘We half expected that she would not turn up,’ said Mr. Richardson Jones.
Miss Ono was expected to have been involved personally in a performance of her famous ‘happenings’. In London two years ago she invited members of the audience to cut off all her clothes.
She recently made a film based entirely on shots of naked human bottoms.
Footnote: Before the last student had left for home, one member of the audience put his shoe in the middle of the floor ... and they all watched it for a while. -
(Mario Basini, Western Mail, 15 June 1968)
>It was forty years ago today... < is part of >What’s Welsh for Performance? Beth yw >performance< yn Gymraeg?< - Uncovering and archiving the history of performance art in Wales.
www.performance-wales.org
(Project: Heike Roms)
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