Couldn't get a ticket? More ways to see Yoko Ono's Friday night performance
Yoko Ono performing at the Bluecoat in 1967. Image courtesy of Sheridon DaviesForty years after her first performance in Liverpool at the Bluecoat in 1967, Yoko Ono will create a new work to celebrate the re-opening of the UK's oldest arts centre after its £12.5m redevelopment. This is a rare opportunity to see live work by Ono in the UK. She recalls her first performance at the venue as 'an experience I have never forgotten'. The performance, which has been specially created for the new performance space at the Bluecoat, will be screened live for the people of Liverpool on Friday 4 April at 18.00 on Liverpool's "BBC Big Screen" in the city centre and at the Bluecoat's "Hub" space. Tickets to the performance sold out within hours of tickets going on sale a month before the show.
The 1967 performance at the Bluecoat by the artist, then unknown in Britain, generated enormous interest and was captured on film by Granada TV (footage currently showing at the Bluecoat). Audience members were invited to join in a number of actions, such as jumping off ladders and wrapping the artist in bandages. Ono smashed a china jug and handed pieces out. Throughout her career as an artist at the forefront of experimental art movements such as Fluxus, conceptual art, underground film and performance, Ono has invited the audience to engage directly with her art. In Liverpool she found a willing and appreciative audience.
Ono's screened performance provides the perfect opening event for Happenstance , a weekend of live art at the Bluecoat. Described as 'two days of the most beautiful, beguiling and brilliant in new performance', the mini-festival includes work from Franko B, Kira O'Reilly, Rajni Shah (who visitors may have seen performing at the Bluecoat's opening weekend), Augusto Corrien, David Blandy and Eitan Buchalter.
