Exhibition: Tomoko Hojo | Unfinished Descriptions. 27-30 September 2018

For her first solo exhibition at Hundred Years Gallery, Tomoko Hojo explores the relationship between voices missing from the archive through photographs, objects, scores and sounds. Based on Yoko Ono’s historical exhibition ‘Unfinished Paintings and Objects’ at Indica Gallery, London, 1966, this show ‘Unfinished Descriptions’ focuses on undocumented works and highlights silenced parts of that exhibition and Yoko Ono herself.

Hojo’s new works explore the relationship between the missing voices, especially woman’s voice in the archive and its alternative representations. Through questioning whose voices are missing and whose voices had more power in the history, Yoko Ono’s undocumented forgotten works will be recreated in playful ways. One of the significant works is ‘O14’ which is a serial number of one of the works might be exhibited at Indica show, but no documentations are left including a title. Over 50 collaborators have been invited to create a score for this mysterious work based on the word list from the original exhibition catalogue and other writings about Yoko Ono. Although all scores depart from this list, it proposes numerous possibilities beyond the past specific context and allows visitors to imagine the rich alternative possibilities. Those missing works will be also revitalised through performances during the show.

In addition to the recreations of past works, discourses around Ono’s identities as a Woman, Japanese, and a wife of John Lennon will be examined through an audio work, texts and an audio-visual installation. Despite having her own career as an avant-garde artist, Ono was or still is ‘the most famous unknown artist’ as John Lennon once described her. Historically, she has mainly been discussed through her relationship to John Lennon and regarded as a gossip lady’ by the mass media. ‘I am listening to you’, a new audio-visual installation is based on an oral history interview with Lennon and Ono conducted on 6 December 1980, two days before Lennon’s death. Whereas Lennon had been talking without interruption, Ono was often muted and mostly accompanied his speech by laughing with high soft small voice. In Japanese society, people insert ‘aizuchi’ – a sort of backchannel such as ’huh’ or ‘yeah’ – quite often during the conversation, to let the other speaker know that they are actively listening. Although Ono seems to inhabit this specific behaviour, there is equally an absence, a meandering in a different time and place. Listening becomes the act of imagining unspoken words, and gradually shifts into a fluidity between listening and speaking, and voiceless voices hidden under discourses would become audible.

Hojo’s exhibition at Hundred Years Gallery will be activated through performances on the evening of 29 September, with a special guest composer/performer Andy Ingamells. The program mainly focuses on Ono’s undocumented works in the original exhibition in 1966, such as Dawn Stone, Draw Line Painting, Shake Hands Piece as well as different versions of ‘O14’ which gathered from diverse collaborators.

Artist Biography:

Tomoko Hojo is an interdisciplinary artist and researcher working within the field of experimental music and sound art. Through the experiences of performing historical avant-garde musixcal works, current works explore the missing voices in the archive and its alternative representations from the feministic point of view. She has completed two Masters’s degrees by 2015, in Sound Arts at the London College of Communication and in Creativity of Arts and the Environment at Tokyo University of the Arts. She has written about the pre-history of Sound Art in Japan from 1950s to 1970s, focusing on exhibited sound works created by artists having their origins in music, published in the book, After Musicking, edited by Yoshitaka Mori – Tokyo University of the Arts Press.
She has an ongoing collaborative project with Swiss-born sound artist Rahel Kraft as Hojo+Kraft, their works highlight the individual hidden, private relationship between sound and place through interviews with local community. She also coordinates and performs as part of Tokyo based Ensemble for Experimental Music and Theater – EEMT, which explores questions around theatre and notation, propounded by John Cage. She is an Overseas Research Fellow supported by Pola Art Foundation in 2017-2018, and a Visiting Researcher at CRiSAP, Creative Research into Sound Arts Practice, London College of Communication, University of the Arts London.

www.tomokohojo.net

27 September: Private View 18.00 – 21.30
28 September: Exhibition 12.00 – 19.00
29 September: Exhibition 15.00 – 19.00 | Performance evening (£8 ticket) 20.00 – 22.00 (for advance tickets via Eventbrite click here) (Facebook event here)
30 September: Exhibition 12.00 – 18.00

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