Anti-BP Activists Stage Nude Lie-In, Pour Oil at Tate Britain
Liberate Tate
Amy Scaife/Liberate Tate via Bloomberg
A protester belonging to the Liberate Tate group lies covered in an oil-like substance at Tate Britain in London in April, 2011. The protest marked the anniversary of the Deepwater Horizon explosion, with those taking part urging the Tate to take no more money from BP Plc.
A protester belonging to the Liberate Tate group lies covered in an oil-like substance at Tate Britain in London in April, 2011. The protest marked the anniversary of the Deepwater Horizon explosion, with those taking part urging the Tate to take no more money from BP Plc. Photographer: Amy Scaife/Liberate Tate via Bloomberg
Liberate Tate
Amy Scaife/Liberate Tate via Bloomberg
A protester belonging to the Liberate Tate group lies covered in an oil-like substance at Tate Britain in London. The protest marks the anniversary of the Deepwater Horizon explosion, with those taking part urging the Tate to take no more money from BP Plc.
A protester belonging to the Liberate Tate group lies covered in an oil-like substance at Tate Britain in London. The protest marks the anniversary of the Deepwater Horizon explosion, with those taking part urging the Tate to take no more money from BP Plc. Photographer: Amy Scaife/Liberate Tate via Bloomberg
A naked youth had oil poured over him inside Tate Britain today in an artist-led demonstration against oil company BP Plc (BP/)’s sponsorship of Tate.
The performance marked the first anniversary of BP’s Deepwater Horizon oil-rig explosion in the Gulf of Mexico, the U.S.’s worst-ever oil spill. BP is a longstanding sponsor of Tate Britain, the British Museum, the Royal Opera House and the National Portrait Gallery, and has said it will maintain those London sponsorships, which cost it a total of more than 1 million pounds ($1.6 million) a year.
Today’s action was staged by Liberate Tate, a group of 15 to 20 artists who want BP’s sponsorship of Tate to end. Shortly after Tate Britain’s 10 a.m. opening, about eight black-clad activists entered the building to perform the strip-in.
The young man “removed his clothes carefully and slowly, and handed it to two other people dressed in black,” said Nina Jones, a 27-year-old painter who took part in the protest. He was “curled in a fetal-like position.”
A man and a woman, “both with veils over their faces, arrived from the very back of the gallery carrying two green petrol cans with BP logos on them,” she recalled. “They started to slowly pour the oil over his body.”
According to another Liberate Tate member, Peter McDonnell, the substance poured over the anonymous protester was “olive oil in a suspension of charcoal,” which can be cleaned up and will not cause damage.
McDonnell said the morning action was “a very dramatic statement of the impact that BP is having on human lives and communities around the world” -- as well as an artwork.
BP Sponsor
Reacting to the protest in an e-mailed release, Tate said BP is “one of the most important sponsors of the arts in the U.K., supporting Tate as well as several other leading cultural institutions.”
Tate’s board adopted a sponsorship policy in 1991 and in 2008 included it in an Ethics Policy that all donors must comply with, it said. “BP has worked with Tate since 1990 and fits within the guidelines of this policy,” Tate said.
In June of last year, as hundreds of guests arrived for Tate’s summer party, black-clad protesters with veils over their heads splattered the party entrance with cans of treacle bearing the BP logo. They then sprinkled bird feathers over the slick. Another group smuggled cans under their skirts and emptied them in Tate Britain’s columned main hall -- the same one where the young man stripped today.
To contact the writer on this story: Farah Nayeri in London at Farahn@bloomberg.net.
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Mark Beech at mbeech@bloomberg.net.
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