Yoko Ono, 1967

After inviting Nicholas Logsdail to visit her at home (via an instructional piece printed in later editions of Grapefruit, 1970), Yoko Ono presented her ‘Half-A-Wind Show’ at Lisson Gallery in 1967 in which this installation, pictured above, first appeared. Logsdail recounts how Ono brought a different level of internationalism to Lisson, resulting in queues of visitors that stretched around the block of Bell Street.

Yoko Ono also commented herself on the exhibition in an accompanying text, ‘Some Notes on the Lisson Gallery Show’, October 1967:

"I think of this show as an elephant’s tail.

Life is only half a game. Molecules are always at the verge of half disappearing and half emerging.

Somebody said I should also put half-a-person in the show. But we are halves already.

Seng, Sung, Sang, Sing and Song were good musicians. The princess asked them to play for the concert of the midsummer night of the warmest day in Li-Fung. It was a tradition in Li-Fung for the best musicians to get together and play for the people all night and soothe the air from the heat. Seng said he would not play because he did not have enough time to prepare. Sung immediately went into an intensive and elaborate preparation. Sang did nothing. He wandered around the fields until the day came. On the night, Seng was not there. Sung’s music overwhelmed people. Sang went on the stage, and when he sung, the warm wind went through his lungs and came out, transformed into the most beautiful music. It was the warm wind that made the music, he said. Sing did not even sing. He just stood on the stage and smiled, and the smile sent vibrations into people’s minds, and they heard, they heard their minds tingling, and they smiled back. Do you know anything about Song? People say that he was too pure, and one day, he just suddenly turned into air and was assimilated into the skies.

It is sad that the air is the only thing we share. No matter how close we get to each other, there is always air between us. It is also nice that we share the air. No matter how far apart we are, the air links us.