John and Yoko: love at first bite

Ono recreates work for opening of art gallery where they met

John Lennon strolled into London's coolest gallery, spied a plump green apple on a Perspex plinth and took a bite. The artist who had placed it there was not amused; yet within days they were inseparable.

Next week Yoko Ono will once more put the apple in place, re-creating for the first time in 40 years the conceptual art stunt that brought her together with the love of her life.

The restaging of the work, Apple, will celebrate the rebirth of Indica, a key venue of the Sixties art scene, which is being given a temporary revival at the Riflemaker Gallery.

Indica was one of the hubs of swinging London. Through the doors flowed figures such as William Burroughs, Allen Ginsberg, the film director Roman Polanski and his wife Sharon Tate, not to mention Lennon and Paul McCartney, both champions of groovy London art.

Barry Miles, who co-founded Indica with John Dunbar, husband of Marianne Faithfull, said: "It was all installations and optical tricks and op art. The spirit was very much of crossing boundaries."

Indica closed for "financial" reasons in 1967.

Yoko has admitted she was "terribly cross" at Lennon's demolition of Apple. "He'd been showing his sophisticated artist side, and then he suddenly did that, and I thought, oh dear."

Riflemaker Becomes Indica runs from 20 November to 12 February(020-7439 0000)