Yoko Ono is an American-Japanese artist, musician, poet, and social activist. Her early works over the 60’s and 70’s were associated with Fluxus, a loosely designated group of interdisciplinary, avant-garde artists taking inspiration from Dada, Ono’s seminal works were defined by the ‘event score’ - a succinct set of instructions that comprised of mental and/or physical actions and tasks that the viewer must execute for the artwork to be fully realised. In her 1963 work Cloud Piece, Ono presents no canvas or space, rather she asks the viewer to imagine digging a hole in the garden, then placing clouds in the hole. This two-step format of instruction, then realisation and the role of the audience and the individual soundly places her intent in the realm of the conceptual, experiential and collaborative.

Ono addresses gender, class, identity, and peace throughout her work that can often take a rather bold, transgressive tone as seen in Ono’s 1964 performance work Cut Piece, which invited the audience to cut pieces of clothing from Ono’s body as she sat quiet and complicit on stage. An observation of the 'neutral' relationship between art and the viewer, Ono seeks to challenge the notion of the female figure as an object in art.

Further strengthening their fundamental conceptual structure, Ono’s works also have a rather metaphysical quality to them. In her work Hide-and-Seek Piece, from her 1963 book of instructions Grapefruit, Ono asks the reader to 'Hide until everybody goes home, Hide until everybody forgets you, Hide until everybody dies'. These stark, rather authoritative commands indicate that this is no simple, innocent task, rather they force the viewer to contemplate an incomprehensible scope of time for which there are no solid answers, and reveal previously unconsidered questions.

Born in Tokyo, Japan in 1933, Ono moved between Japan and the United States in the 1930’s and 1940’s, eventually settling in the U.S. after WWII. Alongside creating music, films, and books, many of which were done closely with John Lennon, Ono has exhibited at various museums and galleries, such as the Sogetsu Art Centre, Tokyo, 1964; and the Everson Museum, New York, 1971, as well as through major retrospectives at the Whitney Museum, New York, 1989; Kunsthalle Bielefeld, Germany, 2008; Serpentine Galleries, London, 2012; Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, Spain, 2013; and the Museum of Modern Art, New York, 2015. She has also been the recipient of many awards, including the lifetime achievement award from the Japan Society of New York, 2005; the Golden Lion Award from the Venice Biennale, 2009; and the Oskar Kokoschka Prize in 2012.