Yoko Ono’s ‘Pamplemousse’ (‘Grapefruit’) is a collection of bizarre and peaceful instructions containing a quiet rhythm, soothing, like a familiar set of hands clasping or a steady dripping tap. The craftwork of her pieces challenge the reader’s perspective in attempt open our minds a little wider to the environment around us and the movement within. It’s as if she knows something we don’t, and guides us calmly toward a great secret: the truth behind these pieces flows between the lines.
Throughout her career, Ono’s demonstrative pieces have always invited the figurative to meet the physical. This resonates within her Central Park Pond Piece and her Pea Piece, where she encourages us to leave clues and objects, to shed the load and leave pieces of ourselves in the places we’ve been. ‘Pamplemousse’ further invites us to reach beyond physical limitations, namely where Ono urges us to ‘fly’, to harness spirals of imagination and creation in order to develop a heightened sense of living. Draped with a delicate mystique, these instructions are incredibly uplifting. Having been translated from Japanese prose to English, ‘Grapefruit’ rings with traditional earthy celebrations and focus on the imaginative plane.
Still an advocate for spreading peace, Yoko Ono urges the movement for unity and serenity on a global scale. With her continuous transdisciplinary work, her career and artistic/political influence has survived far beyond the 1950s-1960s. Ono’s philosophies are voiced almost daily in this modern era, she is active on Twitter and recently held an exhibition as part of the 2013-14 Sydney International Art Series at Sydney’s Museum of Contemporary Art.
Arguably one of the world’s most legendary, Yoko Ono remains a highly relevant artist, musician and activist, ‘Grapefruit’ continues churning with concerns, ideologies and experiments which are still incredibly relevant, almost 50 years after the publication. Yoko Ono’s offers trajectories revolutionary thinking is bound and captured with Grapefruit, and it is clear that her union with John Lennon (see introduction) allowed each of them a fruitfulness beyond the structures of time and space and matter. After reading ‘Grapefruit’, it’s easy to believe Ono’s words are the ointment for our wounded planet. Some may think her to be stuck in a realm of the psychedelic and hallucinogenic, but regardless, her art communicates a contemporary expressionism like no other, and this iconic woman brings to the page a trigger for wild creativity and meditative liberation.
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