Yoko Ono | SKY PUDDLE

Yoko Ono

SKY PUDDLE

London, UK: Phaidon, 2025

11.25 x 8.125 x 0.09”

Edition of 32 signed and numbered copies

The sky has always played an important role in the work of Yoko Ono, from her Hole To See The Sky Through postcard to TV To See The Sky, to numerous texts in her seminal artist book Grapefruit. The most famous of the latter (because it appeared on the back of John Lennon’s Imagine LP as a tacit nod to her contributions to the title track, see below) reads: 

Imagine the clouds dripping. Dig a hole in your garden to put them in.

The word ’sky’ appears in Grapefruit over thirty times. Another work from the book, Water Piece, addresses the sky reflected in a pond or lake or puddle:

Steal a moon on the water with a bucket. Keep stealing until no moon is seen on the water.

This new cast resin and UV flatbed silkscreen print combines elements of both of those early scores. 

First envisioned for an installation in 2011, Ono’s SKY PUDDLES "reimagine the everyday puddle as a portal to the sky.  Resin “puddles,” like delicate, lustrous liquid spills, spread across the floor, inviting viewers to walk among them and experience ground and sky as one continuous field. Ono’s new SKY PUDDLE edition continues this legacy of experimentation and is the first multiple ever created in the SKY PUDDLE series."

The work - their first ever sculptural publication - was commissioned by Phaidon to celebrate the 30th anniversary of their Contemporary Artist Series. It comes with a copy of Ono’s Phaidon monograph, which was released this time last year (see post here). 

Each of the edition of 32 features unique cloud imagery - no two impressions are alike. They are available from the publisher for $2,100.00 US, here.