Yoko Ono is a socially aware and political artist. She was part of the 1960s counter-culture which challenged many social, political and aesthetic norms. Photo / Getty Images
Yoko Ono is a socially aware and political artist. She was part of the 1960s counter-culture which challenged many social, political and aesthetic norms. Photo / Getty Images
ART, LIFE AND EVERYTHING
When we break something we can feel angry. Then, perhaps, sad when we dump a treasured item in the bin.
And maybe guilty, if the thing we've broken is precious to someone else.
Breaking something, whether a humble dinner plate or prize vase, is emotional. It unleashes feelings we preferto avoid.
Wilfully breaking something can have a perverse pleasure because, like throwing a stone at a window, we know we shouldn't.
A piece from the Yoko Ono exhibition Mend Piece, on at Whangārei Art Museum until August 22, possibly the first time an Ono exhibition has been held in New Zealand. Photo / Supplied
This is unusual - more so in 1966 when Ono first exhibited Mend Piece in New York - because we expect to see well-made, crafted things in an art gallery, not broken mass-produced objects.
At each table is clear tape, white and brown string, glue and scissors.
Ono invites each visitor to sit down at a table and make something from the broken ceramic pieces with the common household items provided.
A short statement on the wall reads: "Mend with wisdom, mend with love. It will mend the earth at the same time."
Displayed on shelves when I visited were hundreds of constructions made from broken ceramic pieces, held together with glue, tape and string.
The natural response is to look over what other people had done.
Cup handles joined together to make a heart appeared more than once. Braiding the string was popular.
One pile of saucer pieces had IMAGINE spelled out in string layered over the top. Figures were common, including what looked like a Gremlin from the Steven Spielberg movie.
A visitor works on a piece from the Yoko Ono exhibition Mend Piece. Each visitor is invited to sit at a table and make something from broken ceramic pieces with common household items provided.
Most constructions were abstract, not looking like anything in particular. One, I thought, looked like a miniature replica of the Sydney Opera House.
Not too far into experiencing this exhibition, our usual understanding of the artist's role is challenged. It's us who do the creating, even if it's Ono who provides the rules and the means by which we do so.
What's also challenged is our normal, negative response to a broken object, as we experience it in ordinary life.
Here, what's broken is presented as an opportunity to create something new.
When you first sit down at the table and fumble through the broken cups and saucers, you soon realise that putting them back together isn't an option.
Although the exhibition's title uses the word "mend", the cups and saucers are irreparable. Creation is the only action possible.
And that is what Ono wants us to realise.
She has constructed an experience that forces us to take a different attitude to something broken than we would normally. The negative is turned into a positive — creativity bests destruction.
Ono is a socially aware and political artist. She was part of the counter-culture that emerged in the 1960s, which challenged many social, political and aesthetic norms. She embraced the idealism of youth culture as expressed in music, art and protest.
Mend Piece is still relevant today, more than 50 years after it was first exhibited.
For me, our world, and my own participation in it, feels so often to be broken.
Yet so much of our political and personal response to the environmental and social crises of our time is to try and patch together the world as it is.
When actually, the thing to do, or at least consider, is to give up trying to repair what's broken and create something new. That's the conceptual point Ono's Mend Piece makes. At heart, it's a hopeful statement.
Any cynicism I had before entering the exhibition fell away as I put together my contribution to the shelf displays. I was won over by participating.
Creating isn't just for artists. It's a part of our human nature.
We all have the ability to create, to make anew.
And that is why, with Ono, we can continue to believe we're capable of mending the Earth.
That hope runs counter to the feelings of anger, sadness and guilt that often follow from having broken something. In our case, a planet.
• Yoko Ono: Mend Piece is on at the Whangārei Art Museum until August 22.
