London | Yoko Ono curates Meltdown Festival | retrospective exhibition in Denmark

Curating Meltdown in its 20th-anniversary year, the iconic musician and artist Yoko Ono follows in the footsteps of music's biggest names at London's South Bank Centre 14-23 June.

Ono, who turned 80 in February, is having an incredibly busy year. Her retrospective Half-A-Wind Show is touring major museums across Germany, Denmark, Austria and Spain. Numerous projects are slated for 2013 including a new Plastic Ono Band album, the reissue of her influential record albums from 1968 to 1985, a career-spanning art book, Infinite Universe At Dawn, and the curation of the 2013 Meltdown Festival. Yoko Ono's Meltdown brings together some of the world's leading musicians, as well as new and emerging artists. Meltdown also honours Yoko Ono's dedication to environmentalism, feminism and peace with two weekends of talks, performances, debates and films, and a series of her performance pieces including Sky Piece to Jesus Christ, Cut Piece (featuring Peaches) and Telephone Piece. One of the most daring artists of our time, Meltdown curator Yoko Ono kicks off the festival with a rare performance by Yoko Ono Plastic Ono Band. The group are led by Yoko's son, Sean Ono Lennon, who collaborated with her on the 2009 critically-acclaimed record, Between My Head And The Sky. Meltdown is proud to present the only UK show this year from Oscar-nominated composer Ryuichi Sakamoto and German producer Alva Noto. The pair have collaborated for over a decade, mixing emotionally charged and passionate piano solos with sparse percussion and throbbing bass pulses. Their experimental project comes to life on the live stage with a staggering visual production triggered by the performance. There will also be two weekends of talks and debates. Activism Weekend (15 & 16 June) features the Guerilla Girls, the launch of new book ‘Let's Start a Pussy Riot' and more. The Future Weekend (22 & 23 June) opens with Yoko Ono in conversation with Serpentine Gallery curator Hans-Ulrich Obrist. In Denmark: YOKO ONO - HALF-A-WIND SHOW A Retrospective opens 7 June - 29 September 2013 Yoko Ono is a pioneer in the artistic fields to which she has devoted her life over the years: performance art, visual art, installation, film, music, literature and actions. In the early sixties she was already known for her ground-breaking experimental, conceptual and performance works, which were shown at the time in New York and later in Japan. The Instructions for Paintings exhibited in 1961 and 1962, like her famous performance Cut Piece (1962), as well as the book Grapefruit from 1964, helped to consolidate her position as a leading artist in the New York avant-garde milieu. The point of departure for the Louisiana’s retrospective is Yoko Ono’s classic works from the 1960s and 1970s, elucidating among other things her crucial influence on the Fluxus movement and later conceptual and performance art. But poetry, film, photography, drawing and music, all important media for her artistic expression, are also covered. In addition several major installations and brand new works are featured in the exhibition. Yoko Ono’s strong commitment to peace and human rights and her enduring efforts to reach out and engage in dialogue with people all over the world with her messages, among other ways through social media and ‘Participation Pieces’, can also be experienced in the exhibition. The exhibition YOKO ONO – HALF-A-WIND SHOW has been mounted in collaboration with Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt.