Three ballet dancers interrupted BP’s third and final Summer Screen in Trafalgar Square[1], 30 minutes before the scheduled broadcast of the opera Cinderella began. The disturbance took the form of a short piece of dance based on Swan Lake [2], with the classic tale used as analogy for BP’s controversial investment in the Canadian tar sands [3],[4]. The performance featured the White Swan being smeared by an oily substance and suffocated with a cloth. The crowd of opera-lovers were very receptive, greeting the grand finale with applause and cheers. 

'On 14 June, guests and judges arriving for the BP Portrait Award ceremony came face to face with portraits of people affected by BP's massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. The blowout of the Deepwater Horizon caused the deaths of 11 oil workers and untold, ongoing damage to the people and the environment of the Gulf Coast.

On the first anniversary of BP's oil disaster, Climate Rush held a party and art show to protest outside Tate Britain. As they point out, disasters such as this oil spill are only a part of the enormous damage BP causes to the planet.

For immediate release: Thursday 21st April 2011

For more information contact Simon Bradley, 07984 541 490 

(Photo by Amy Scaife: http://www.amyscaife.co.uk)

20.4.11: Art activists stage performance against gallery links with BP

This letter was pulled together by PLATFORM/Licence to Spill...

The Guardian, Wednesday 20 April 2011: http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2011/apr/20/tate-end-relationship-with-bp?INTCMP=SRCH

EMAIL tate

PRESS