Win for Activist Art
A group of artists in the UK have come up with a very novel and eye-catching way to protest the continued environmental impact of BP’s oil sands projects and the Gulf of Mexico oil spill.
In this photo, a naked member of the activist group Liberate Tate is shown lying on the floor of Tate’s classical sculpture room to protest Tate’s ongoing partnership with BP. Just moments before, a group of his fellow artists entered the room with their heads covered and used BP-branded oil cans to pour a black, sludge-like substance over the naked protester.
One member of the action group, Peter McDonnell, described the action as “a very dramatic statement of the impact that BP is having on human lives and communities around the world.”
The protest was staged to mark the one-year anniversary of the Deepwater Horizon rig explosion. It went on for 87 minutes — one for each day the oil spilled into the Gulf of Mexico.
