BP UK Culture advertisement at Kings Cross underground station

BP’s first advertising campaign after the Gulf of Mexico began on 1 July 2011 with an Olympic-based tv spot with outdoor, print and digital ads following. Themed “2012 Fuelling the Future”, the campaign uses the corporation’s sponsorship of art and sport in a multi-million pound attempt to rehabilitate the brand.

The value to BP of the arts establishment that support the oil company becomes even clearer to see. BP uses the content of the Cultural Olympiad and its involvement in arts and culture – not its core business – to project a “feel good” image of the company.

Liberate Tate stage Arctic ice performance in Tate Turbine Hall

‘Floe-piece’ highlights Tate’s sanctioning of BP’s risky Arctic drilling

On Saturday evening (14 January 2012) art collective Liberate Tate carried out their latest unofficial performance in Tate Modern highlighting Tate’s complicity in BP’s controversial oil extraction practices around the world.

At 6.30pm at the Occupy London protest camp at St Paul’s Cathedral four veiled figures dressed in black lifted the 55 kg chunk of Arctic ice onto a sledge and walked it in procession across the Thames on the Millennium Bridge and into the Tate Modern Turbine Hall. They placed the ice at the bottom of the Turbine Hall, standing silently around the melting ice for 15 minutes before leaving the building.

The Arctic ice had been donated to the Occupy London protest by an Arctic researcher who had brought it back to the UK.

Terri Gosnell of Liberate Tate who carried one corner of the sledge said:

“Arctic ice is melting at record rates as a result of climate change. The irony is that the same oil companies like BP that carry a lot of responsibility for climate change, are using the melting ice as an opportunity to drill for more oil in previously inaccessible areas. And Tate is still maintaining that this is a perfectly respectable company to be taking money from.”

Chris Sands of Liberate Tate who took part in the performance said:

“BP have an appalling record of leaks and spills in their Arctic drilling in Proudhoe Bay, Alaska, and now they are expanding their operations in Arctic Canada and Russia too. Arctic oil drilling is incredibly risky because of the adverse conditions and the difficulty of access for potential clean up operations. Tate is aligning itself with a company that it gambling with some of out last pristine eco-systems as a means of maintaining its profit margins.”

The performance took place after a day in which more than 150 people took part in an afternoon-long event called ‘The Corporate Occupation of the Arts’ at the Bank of Ideas, a space being run by the Occupy London movement.

Following the Liberate Tate performance the Occupy London General Assembly was held in Tate Modern around the Arctic ice – the first time Occupy London has held this daily gathering in a public art museum.

Thousands of Tate visitors have called on the art museum to end its relationship with BP so they can enjoy great art without the gallery implicating them in the climate and other negative environmental impacts of the oil company.

A 5 minute video clip of the Liberate Tate performance can be see at: http://vimeo.com/35078978

Pictures of the performance are available for media through Rex Features, see here.

For more information and comment contact: liberatetate@gmail.com

*** ENDS ****

Notes to the editor:

1. A placard with the title of the performance and a brief explanation was placed at the foot of the melting ice piece. The placard read:

Floe Piece
Liberate Tate. Arctic Ice, canvas, light, water.

“The fact that BP had one major incident in 2010 does not mean we should not be taking support from them.” – Nicholas Serota, Director, Tate.

[Floe Piece - an expression applied to sheets of ice not more than a furlong in length]

The Deepwater Horizon disaster did not end in 2010 for the communities affected; BP’s harmful impacts are numerous and occur across the globe year on year. In 2010-11 BP pushed forward expansion plans into the Arctic in Alaska, Canada and Russia.

Oil extraction in this region is only possible because of melting ice caused by climate change. Spills in Arctic waters are immensely more complicated than elsewhere, and indeed BP is itself responsible for the largest oil spill on Alaska’s north slope, at Prudhoe Bay in 2006, where the company continues to drill for oil.

This Arctic ice has been transported from the Arctic region to London, the home of BP; today (14 January 2012) it has been carried by Liberate Tate from Occupy London at LSX to Tate Modern’s Turbine Hall.

The journey of this block of ice retraces the line of connection from BP’s devastating impacts on ecosystems, communities and the global climate to Tate, an art museum complicit in this destruction though its support of the company’s efforts to create a positive public image, a social licence to operate.

2. Liberate Tate (www.liberatetate.org) is an art collective exploring the role of creative intervention in social change dedicated to taking creative disobedience against Tate until it drops its oil company funding. Contact: liberatetate@gmail.com www.twitter.com/liberatetate.

The 14 January 2012 performance of the art collective follows earlier self-curated performances at Tate such as:
• ‘Human Cost’: a performance in Tate Britain on the anniversary of the Deepwater Horizon explosion (April 2011) when a naked member of the group had an oil-like substance poured over them on the floor in the middle of the exhibition Single Form which was dedicated to the human body and part of ‘BP British Art Displays’
Video here.
• ‘Dead in the water’: a contribution to Tate Modern’s 10th Birthday celebrations (May 2010) by hanging dead fish and birds from dozens of giant black helium balloons in the Turbine Hall
• ‘License to spill’: an oil spill at the Tate Summer Party celebrating 20 years of BP support (June 2010) – Video here.
• ‘Crude/Sunflower’: an installation art work which saw over 30 members of the collective draw a giant sunflower in the Turbine Hall with black oil paint bursting from BP-branded tubes of paint (September 2010) – Video here.

Liberate Tate performance Human Cost at Tate Britain April 2011 © Amy Scaife

You can read the press release here and watch the video here. The performance gained widespread media coverage including a Channel 4 News viewable here. On the same day Liberate Tate’s Human Cost intervention, 166 people who work in the arts published a letter in the Guardian calling on Tate to end its sponsorship relationship with BP.

Culture Beyond Oil
In December 2011 Liberate Tate, arts and research organisation Platform and activist group Art Not Oil released a new publication, Not if but when: Culture Beyond Oil, on oil sponsorship of the arts. Featuring artworks in dialogue with the BP Gulf of Mexico catastrophe and articles that set out the compelling arguments for an end to BP and Shell’s murky involvement with many of the nation’s favourite cultural institutions, the publication release with links to read it online is here.

You can order a copy of the full colour 1000 print limited edition of Not if but when: Culture Beyond Oil each numbered and daubed with oil from Gulf of Mexico beaches by featured artist Ruppe Koselleck as part of his ongoing Takeover BP project.

Open Letter to Nicolas Serota
Liberate Tate wanted to enhance performances with evidence of the voice of Tate members and visitors especially as Tate had appeared to not make any meaningful effort to assess their views. Given this, Liberate Tate gave stakeholders this opportunity through an Open Letter to Nicolas Serota and in only three weeks over 8,000 called on Tate to BP disengage with BP given the damage being caused by the company to ecosystems, communities and the climate. Tate members handed the Open Letter petition to Tate Director Nicholas Serota at the Tate Members AGM on Friday 2 December 2011.

Working with other artists and performers: Reverend Billy mass exorcism in Tate over ‘taint’ of BP sponsorship
In July 2011 Liberate Tate brought a very special event to Tate with four other different UK-based groups (UK Tar Sands Network, London Rising Tide, Art Not Oil and Climate Rush) that have staged performance interventions and protests at Tate which saw Reverend Billy and the Church of Earthalujah choir join with art activists, artists, Tate members and concerned members of the public in the Tate Turbine Hall to lay hands on Tate Modern and cast out the demon of BP’s oil sponsorship of the art institution. Read the release here and watch the video of the performance here.

Coming soon: Tate à Tate
An alternative audio tour of Tate, with sound works by commissioned artists, Tate à Tate will allow anyone visiting Tate to be part of a Liberate Tate durational performance in an unsanctioned installation inside the galleries providing a problematised experience of the presence of BP within these spaces. The work takes place in three parts — Tate Britain, Tate Modern, and the boat journey in between the two.

All the recording and mixes were finished in 2011 and following final production it will be unveiled in the coming months. There is a snippet of one of the pieces on the website www.tateatate.org. Full previews will be available shortly for use in the galleries and Tate Boat with phone hand sets or other audio players. Members of First Nation indigenous communities in Canada impacted by tar sands have already had a trial run when they were passing through London.

With thanks to everyone who supported Liberate Tate in 2011. In 2012 the effort to end oil sponsorship of the arts intensifies. Our invitation for artists, art lovers, and other concerned members of the public to act to ensure that Tate ends its oil sponsorship remains open. Our public galleries are seriously compromised by supporting the morally bankrupt practices of oil companies and implicating us all in a culture of death. Together we can imagine and bring about culture beyond oil, where art is put back into the service of life.

“I am a trustee of Tate, which takes money from BP. BP is beginning to stand for ‘Beyond the Pale’. It’s going to dig up the Arctic, it’s sucking up oil from tar sands. We should have a moratorium on the seas and stop deep drilling. What Platform are saying [about BP, its support for regimes of human rights abuses and how arts institutions are implicated] is right and it needs to be said. People are demanding human rights across the world. When activists and all the groups protest, at for example events like Tate Summer Party, that is a thoroughly good thing. It allows me to say: BP are a disgrace.

“The relationship of BP and Tate is nuanced and complex and full of contradictions. I am critical of BP and yet I sit on the Tate Board. I’m on that Board because I believe in the power of art. Art is important, yet art is under threat. That is why I sit on that Board. I will not leave the Board because of protests about BP but these protests are important.

Bob and Roberta Smith © Friends of the Earth

“Green politics has two broad groups, those that go out and do very powerful and political actions, things that I would never do, like Greenpeace getting on boats in front of a whale. And then there are those that engage politicians and the people who have power and create a situation where a dialogue can take place. I fit more in that latter camp than the activists although I respect what the activists are doing and saying and they are right to highlight what they are.

“Art, unfortunately, is not a clean a space. If Michelangelo had said to the Pope, ‘I don’t like what you are doing in France’, there would be no Sistine Chapel ceiling. Art is filthy. It is as filthy as I am buying petrol from BP to drive to B&Q to get materials to make my art. The whole of Western society is based on digging up the planet and burning it. So many of us all are horrified about the Gulf, the Arctic and the environment elsewhere.

“That public concern about BP includes Tate members and visitors – that is why [artist and Tate trustee] Wolfgang Tillmans raised this issue at a Tate Board meeting. My ability to talk to those I have access to is generated by protest. Protest does puts pressure on Tate. That’s a good thing. And via that protests also put pressure on BP.”

BP Sucks! @ Tate / Bob and Roberta Smith Blocks (Tate Exclusive) Reworked © Liberate Tate 2010

The announcement from BP comes at a time when the sponsorship arrangements between oil companies and cultural institutions, in particular between BP and Tate, has become increasingly controversial. Earlier this month Tate head Nicholas Serota was handed a petition with more than 8,000 signatures from Tate members and visitors at the Tate members AGM calling on Tate to end its relationship with BP, while Tate Trustee Patrick Brill (aka Bob and Roberta Smith) was quoted as calling BP “a disgrace”.

Chris Sands, from art-activists Liberate Tate, who have carried out a number of unsolicited performance interventions in Tate spaces over BP-sponsorship said:

“Tate Board of Trustees should make the decision to refuse this dirty oil money. For too long the art museum has supported BP against the demonstrable wishes of so many thousands of Tate members and visitors as well as hundreds of artists. It is now up to the Tate governing body to demonstrate 21st century leadership and act on growing public concern by ending Tate’s relationship with BP not renewing it. Only by breaking its links with BP will the Tate Board be acting in the best interests of Tate and the arts as well as affected communities, future generations and the world we live in.”

Kevin Smith from the art-campaign group Platform, and one of the editors of the recent publication, ‘Not if but when, Culture Beyond Oil’ said,

“By aligning themselves with BP, the British Museum, the National Portrait Gallery, the Royal Opera House and Tate Britain are legitimising the devastation of indigenous communities in Canada through tar sands extraction, the expansion of dangerous oil drilling in the Arctic, and the reckless business practices that lead to the deaths of 11 oil workers on the Deepwater Horizon. BP’s involvement with these institutions represents a serious stain on the UK’s cultural patrimony.”

At the Tate Members AGM on 2 December, Nicholas Serota announced that the decision over BP sponsorship was to be taken “quite soon” by Tate Trustees.

Kevin Smith of Platform said: “We need to have clarity from Nicholas Serota about if this announcement is being made before the decision that he said Tate trustees would be making over BP sponsorship, or whether this decision is still going to be made. Part of the problem here is that public institutions are not being very transparent over controversial decisions in which there is a clear public interest.”

For more information or comment call Mel Evans from Platform on 07790 430 620 mel@platformlondon.org
Or email liberatetate@gmail.com

*** ENDS ***

Notes to the editor

Patrick Brill quote – Tate trustee reignites BP row ahead of Turner Prize – http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/art/news/tate-trustee-reignites-bp-row-ahead-of-turner-prize-6268886.html

Quotes from Nicholas Serota at Tate Members AGM –

This development is centred on huge new ziggurat-like building being added above the Oil Tanks at the south of the existing art museum, increasing exhibition space and creating facilities for the gallery’s learning programmes. We are told: “The Oil Tanks are not merely the physical foundation of the new building, but also the starting point for intellectual and curatorial approaches which have changed to meet the needs of a contemporary museum at the beginning of the 21st century.”

When the London 2012 Festival programme, the ‘finale’ of the BP-sponsored Cultural Olympiad, was released last month we learnt that the former Bankside Power Station’s cleaned out Oil Tanks will open on Friday 6 July 2012 (the whole development will not be complete until 2016).

The circular Oil Tanks – over thirty metres across and seven metres high – are to be the “anchor for Tate Modern’s live programme of performance and event-based art”. The opening programme, to be announced in spring 2012, is set “to bring together performances, debates, films and interventions, including major newly commissioned installations by artists working across these disciplines”.

In the space where Liberate Tate was born – on Level 7 of Tate Modern in January 2010 – artists, activists and art lovers at a workshop on art and activism, Disobedience Makes History, were told about the plans for the vast chambers south-west of the Turbine Hall below them by the late Barry Mason, a Tate member (and well known cycling activist and supporter of environmental projects in Southwark).

BP out of Tate: Drawing created at Tate Modern, Disobedience Makes History January 2010

Workshop participants had identified Tate’s relationship with BP as severely problematic given the corporate’s record of social and ecological damage as well as how sponsorship was affecting Tate’s organisational attitude to free expression. Barry proposed that the Tate he so loved to be given the chance to live up to what it should be and take the symbolic moment of the cleaned out Oil Tanks opening to be the opportunity for ending its relationship with oil company.

Liberate Tate, and others, have always called for Tate to end its support of BP relationship forthwith. If Tate were not going to cut short its present contract with BP for which 2011 is the last full year, then not renewing it again for 2012 would mean the opening of the cleaned out Oil Tanks would indeed be truly the moment when a new benchmark for environmental sustainability for museums and galleries would be marked.

Tate Modern Director Chris Dercon has said that: “The Oil Tanks will give visitors a new way to explore and experience art at Tate Modern.” If Tate opens the Oil Tanks with BP remaining as a sponsor, it would not be the case that Tate would be offering advances in intellectual and curatorial approaches. New would be listening to the Tate Members and visitors and a growing number of artists that know Tate should no longer support BP in its attempt to promote a positive public image at variance with its actions in the world.

Many that have a deep affection for Tate also have a deep concern that the museum no longer jeopardize its own good reputation for a corporation that cares more about its profits than life or the future of the planet.

Transforming Tate and redefining the museum for the 21st century means not just cleaning the oil out of Oil Tanks, but cleaning BP out of Tate. The time for leadership is here.

If you want to see an end to art’s relationship with the oil industry, here are some of the ways in which you can act towards that aim. We focus here largely on Tate although many of these actions can be directed at other cultural institutions with links to BP and Shell in particular.

USE YOUR VOICE

Let cultural institutions know how you feel about their acceptance of climate-changing funding.

As part of our on-going campaign to liberate Tate from oil sponsorship we have created an open letter to Nicholas Serota. If you have not done so already please put your name to the letter – over 8,000 Tate members and visitors have already done so.

Please promote the letter through your social and professional networks.

Let Tate Trustees know your views

Our first handover of signatures to the open letter to Nicholas Serota on 2 December 2011 resulted in the revelation that Trustees will make a decision on the Tate-BP relationship soon.

Tate Trustees are from ‘different backgrounds, areas of expertise and perspectives’. You can find them listed in the ‘Governance’ section of the Tate website here. Write to one or more.

Lobby Tate Trustees with your views: Bob and Roberta Smith, Wolfgang Tillmans and Tomma Abts are presently the artists on Tate’s Board.

Tate has an Ethics Committee which “exists to review any ethical issue raised by a Director of Tate, or any member of the Board of Trustees, and provide guidance on conflict of interest management”. Tate Trustees sit on this body – its chair Patricia Lankester and Wolfgang Tillmans. Non-Trustees on this body are Helen Alexander, Monisha Shah and Jules Sher QC. You can write to the chair or other members via Tate.

Don’t forget to keep it polite. Feel free to use the evidence in the Culture Beyond Oil publication to back up your points.

Lobby Tate management

Whilst Tate Trustees will make the decision on whether to renew the sponsorship deal with BP, Tate management will play a key role. They have previously (during the Gulf of Mexico spill!) recommended continuation.

Write to Nicholas Serota Director of Tate and copy in Deputy Director Alex Beard. You will find them listed on the Tate website here. Present directors include Dr Penelope Curtis, Director of Tate Britain, the gallery most associated with BP, Rebecca Williams, Director of Development (responsible for sponsorship) and Marc Sands (responsible for Tate’s brand and relationships with ‘audiences’).

Tate Modern, Bankside, London SE1 9TG

If you meet any senior manager in person or when they are at a public event, do make your views known.

Visiting a Tate gallery?

Fill in a comment card or questionnaire with your views – look out for these print items with ‘WHAT DO YOU THINK?’ on them and place in the boxes provided.

These are just some of the ways to add pressure to decision-makers. You can also make your views know in the media, create art, protest and much more. Now is a key time to act. Actions in the world change it. Let’s have the collective courage to free our cultural institutions from oil!

The body that should be taking leadership to end BP’s involvement with Tate is its Board of Trustees, the legal entity responsible for running Tate. Tate Trustees are required by law to act as guardians of the public interest.

Like other National Museums and Galleries Tate is a charity. Its full charitable status in the UK allows Tate to raise funds from sponsorship. Through the Museums and Galleries Act 1992, and as set out in the Charities Act, Tate is an ‘exempt charity’ regulated by both statute and the Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS), a department of the UK government, not the Charity Commission.

Tate is a Non-Departmental Public Body (NDPB), funded in part by DCMS. A NDPB is a body, which, as Tate states: “carries out functions on behalf of the government department that sponsors it, but is administered independently. It is therefore able to focus entirely on its own objectives and make unbiased recommendations and decisions”. As such, Tate makes decisions free from government. The funding agreement with government may set out broad expectations (such as “Tate will pursue ways to increase its self-generated income, including through private giving” and that “free entry to the permanent collections of the national museums will continue) but it makes no prescriptions on how Tate should supplement the grant it receives from the DCMS through other sources such as sponsorship. The Coalition Government has told Tate it wants to see more private giving and a broad range of business support, but it does not tell Tate which companies it should or should not accept support from.

BP was introduced as a sponsor by Tate in 1990. The last decision to extend BP’s sponsorship (to 2012) was taken in 2006. A Freedom of Information Act request reveals the decision was “taken by members of the senior management team”. It is not known why what had become such a contentious relationship was continued without a decision at Board level. In August 2007, decision-making on sponsorship matters became more complicated by the appointment of BP’s former CEO and Chair Lord Browne to the Tate Board. In January 2009 Lord Browne became Chair of Tate Board of Trustees. While no-one questions Lord Browne’s passion for the arts and that he has chaired Tate through a period of notable successes, questions do remain about Tate decision-making in relation to BP. Not least because any policy relating to BP is a reflection, in part, on decisions made whilst Browne was still at the helm of the oil company. Related Tate minutes do not refer to the Chair standing aside for related items.

On 18 May 2010, as BP oil was spilling across the Gulf of Mexico, the Tate Board accepted, on the recommendation of the Tate Ethics Committee (as of 6 May 2010) that its current relationship with BP be continued “given that there was no evidence to suggest that the acceptance of funds from BP would significantly damage the effective operation of Tate.” It was recognised that “this could change in the future and should be kept under review.”

Tate maintained that in “scrutinising its corporate sponsors during a period of constrained public spending, Tate is fulfilling its duty as a responsible public body”. Importantly, the Board agreed to a “review of all corporate sponsorships” and acknowledged that its own Sustainability Strategy did not include funding relationships and this should be rectified.

Within only weeks of the re-endorsement of the BP relationship by the Board it became totally apparent that a wide cross-section of people with various relationships to the arts believed that, in the words of a letter to the national press, “the BP logo represents a stain on Tate’s international reputation”, that “many artists are angry that Tate and other national cultural institutions continue to sidestep the issue of oil sponsorship”, and “the public is rapidly coming to recognise that the sponsorship programmes of BP and Shell are means by which attention can be distracted from their impacts on human rights, the environment and the global climate”. In short, Tate’s relationship with stakeholders was being harmed ahead of and in 2010, as it still is today. The Tate Board has not taken into account the full extent of damage to its reputation and other relationships (there are reasons in Tate’s own Ethical Policy for not accepting sponsorship funds from BP).

Given increasing awareness about the climate and BP, being associated with that company as it continues to be one of the biggest polluters in the world and lobbies against clean energy to weaken climate legislation will only further damage Tate’s relationships.

If earlier decisions have become even more questionable, this is also extended to the fact that Tate Trustees had unfortunately allowed the sponsorship contract with BP to contain a confidentiality clause, prohibiting either party from releasing details of the agreement. Tate will not even release information such as contract start and end dates. How did Tate’s governing body allow it to be liable for breach of confidence through such an obligation so invidious to values of public transparency? The public (and potential sponsors) deserve to know more about the deal that is supposedly worth being implicated in environmental degradation, climate change, human rights abuses and the backing of repressive regimes such as those the Arab Spring has confronted.

While Tate trustees do have a duty to maximise resources for the institution, in certain circumstances, they have the space to choose to refuse money. Papers to the Tate Board have stated a legal requirement to be predisposed to accept funds from legal sources. Yet the law clearly allows ethical factors to be taken into account. Trustees need only to be able to demonstrate that they have acted in line with their objects.

The position of Tate towards a contentious donor is determined by whether its objects are affected by association with that donor. The refusal of a donation can be made on various different grounds. There are strong grounds to see BP working in ways opposed to those of Tate, such as its position on sustainability. There is also now demonstrable evidence that the receipt of BP money is affecting support for Tate whether in the hundreds of artists that have voiced their protests or from Tate members, visitors and amongst the wider public. Sound legal, regulatory and governance mechanisms exist to enable Tate not renew a further contract with BP.

Tate’s interpretation of its Ethical Fundraising Policy with regard to BP to date should be revisited and a different position taken at the earliest opportunity. Tate has a sponsor in BP that is engaged in socially and ecologically destructive activities. This is incompatible with Tate’s ethical guidelines, its stated vision in regard to sustainability and climate change, and for maintaining Tate’s reputation.

In addition, Tate’s mission is undermined if visitors to its galleries cannot enjoy great art without the museum making them complicit in creating climate chaos. A significant and growing number of Tate members and visitors are saying that this is the case.

Tate Board of Trustees, as a governing body, should recognise this, listen and act on public concern and take leadership by ending Tate’s relationship with BP. In doing so the Board will be acting in the best interests of Tate and the arts as well as affected communities, future generations and the world we live in.

5 December 2011 – For Immediate Release

The decision about whether or not to renew an increasingly controversial sponsorship contract with oil giant BP is due to be made “soon” according to comments made by Tate Director Nicholas Serota at the Tate Members AGM Friday (2 December).

The comments were made in response to an open letter delivered to Nicholas Serota at the Members AGM signed by over 8,000 Tate Members and visitors, demanding that Tate disengage from BP as a sponsor due to the devastating impacts BP has around the world. The Open Letter has been organised by a coalition of organisations including Liberate Tate, Platform and Art Not Oil [1].

In the text of the letter, signatories underline that they have “enormous respect for the cultural contribution that Tate makes to the world”, but are also “greatly concerned by the damage being caused by BP to ecosystems, communities and the climate”. [2]

Nicholas Serota said that: “The Trustees have recognised that BP has supported the gallery over a 20 year period. They have been in a partnership with BP over that period and have decided not to withdraw from that partnership in the belief that the good that has been done through the money that has come from BP for the gallery, and for the gallery’s public, has been very profound. They are in the process of whether or not to extend the relationship. All I can really say today is that the views that you have registered will be conveyed to the Trustees. It is a decision that is going to be taken quite soon,” and added that “The Trustees will have a very difficult decision to make.” [3]

The presentation of the petition came at the end of another difficult week for Tate-BP relations. On Monday (28 November) a national newspaper revealed Tate Trustee Patrick Brill has branded the company as a “disgrace” [4] and on Tuesday (29 November) a new publication, Not if But when: Culture Beyond Oil was launched, featuring a number of people from the arts speaking out against the sponsorship link. [5]

That a significant and growing number of Tate members and visitors are adding their voices to those of artists with national and international standing for Tate to cut ties with the oil company is a clear demonstration that Tate’s Board and senior management now need to urgently review the relationship with BP.

Chris Sands of Liberate Tate said: “Tate can no longer respond by simply stating that BP is an important sponsor of the arts. Tate’s visiting public and its own Members are saying in large numbers that maintaining a relationship with an oil company like BP is harming both the reputation of Tate and the experience of enjoying great art in a public gallery.”

Mel Evans of Platform said: “When Tate Trustees make the decision about whether or not to renew BP sponsorship, they need to take into account how much the context has changed in the last two decades since the sponsorship began. We know that climate change is the biggest threat we have ever faced on a global level, and we know that oil companies like BP are chaining us to a dangerously outdated energy model while also actively lobbying to undermine low-carbon legislation. Tate needs to find sponsors that are in keeping with its commitment to sustainability and the human rights agenda.”

Note to editors:

[1] Liberate Tate (www.liberatetate.org) is an art collective exploring the role of creative intervention in social change dedicated to taking creative disobedience against Tate until it drops its oil company funding. Contact: liberatetate@gmail.com www.twitter.com/liberatetate.

Platform (www.platformlondon.org) is an arts and research organisation bringing together environmentalists, artists, human rights campaigners, educationalists and community activists to create innovative projects driven by the need for social and environmental justice. Contact: info@platformlondon.org www.twitter.com/PlatformLondon.

Art Not Oil (www.artnotoil.org.uk) encourages artists – and would-be artists – to create work that explores the damage that companies like BP and Shell are doing to the planet, and the role art can play in counteracting that damage. Contact info@artnotoil.org.uk.

[2] The full text of the Open Letter to Nicholas Serota about BP (online here http://liberatetate.wordpress.com/open-letter-to-nicholas-serota/) is:

Dear Nicholas Serota,

I am writing to you as someone who has enormous respect for the cultural contribution that Tate makes to the world, and also as someone who is greatly concerned by the damage being caused by BP to ecosystems, communities and the climate. Apart from the catastrophic Gulf of Mexico spill, BP is also expanding into devastating tar sands extraction in Canada, is drilling in risky regions in the Arctic and as a company is responsible for more carbon emissions than the UK itself. There is a contradiction in Tate being committed to climate action while also being heavily associated to a company whose business model is binding us to a catastrophically dangerous future and outdated energy model. This association is damaging to Tate’s reputation and its relationship with an increasingly climate-conscious general public. It is for these reasons that I call on Tate to: 1) Take the necessary steps to disengage from BP as a sponsor, and stop allowing Tate to be used to deflect attention away from the devastating impacts that BP has around the world. 2) As part of that process, and as a show of your commitment to the national public debate about ethics and sponsorship, to disclose the amount that BP donates to Tate, as has been the subject of Freedom of Information requests.

[3] Nicholas Serota’s full response at the Tate Members AGM 2011 was as follows: “You will not be surprised to learn that the whole question of the support from BP has exercised Trustees quite seriously over the past two years. Both the Trustees as a Board but also the Trustees through their Ethics Committee, which was instituted about four years ago, have looked very carefully at the question. They are aware, of course, that there are members of the audience, both here and also more widely, who have expressed real concern at the continuing support BP have been giving.

“The Trustees have recognised that BP has supported the gallery over a 20 year period. They have been in a partnership with BP over that period and have decided not to withdraw from that partnership in the belief that the good that has been done through the money that has come from BP for the gallery, and for the gallery’s public, has been very profound. They are in the process of whether or not to extend the relationship.

“All I can really say today is that the views that you have registered will be conveyed to the Trustees. It is a decision that is going to be taken quite soon. I will certainly register to the Trustees the point that you have made today and, indeed, the number of Members that have signed this petition.

“The Trustees will have a very difficult decision to make, I think, in terms of their responsibility as Trustees of the charity, to take monies that are offered to them from organisations that are continuing to act in a manner that is not in any way running against the laws of this country; that are basically a company that is continuing to act in a way that many other companies do in terms of producing oil, which probably many of the people in this room have used in order to come to this very event. But they nevertheless need to weigh all the considerations and it is not an easy choice, I think, for the Trustees to make.”

[4] See The Independent 28 November 2011: Tate trustee reignites BP row ahead of Turner Prize: Patrick Brill brands oil company “a disgrace”, as campaign groups call for end of sponsorship deal

[5] The latest example, adding to previous letters in national newspapers, is a new publication by Liberate Tate, Platform and Art Not Oil, ‘Not If But When: Culture Beyond Oil’, was launched on 29 November 2011 and includes a section dedicated to representing a range of artists’ concerns, including written statements, videos, music and drawings (available to read online here: http://blog.platformlondon.org/2011/11/27/read-online-now-not-if-but-when-culture-beyond-oil/ ).

Now available to read online – click on the Issuu link here, or you can download the publication as a pdf here.

For hard copies by post visit this page on the Platform blog for a range of payment options.

December 2011: Art collective Liberate Tate, arts and research organisation Platform and activist group Art Not Oil release a new publication, ‘Not if but when: Culture Beyond Oil’, on oil sponsorship of the arts.

At a time of growing unease within and without the cultural sector about the involvement of oil companies with the nation’s most high profile galleries, Culture Beyond Oil brings together responses of artists and activists to the debate in a unique collaboration between artists, activists, researchers, theorists and critics.

The full-colour publication has 100 pages of art and commentary including:

- Platform profiles of Shell and BP and why these companies need to use public cultural institutions to gain social approval, calls for Tate to reveal the secret fee that BP pays it, and a timeline of how the ethics of arts and oil companies has moved centre-stage.

- Liberate Tate respond to critiques that some cultural figures come up with to defend oil sponsorship when the art collective’s debate-provoking performances at Tate hit the national headlines. The interventionists also underline that Tate can take a positive governance decision to free art from oil and end its relationship with BP if their Board of Trustees act with leadership fit for the 21st century.

- Stunning oil response artworks including pieces by Banksy, Ben Jones, Ahmed Bassiouny and Chris Jordan; video works and performance footage (via QR codes) by Liberate Tate and He He, as well as written contributions by artists and writers such as Conrad Atkinson, Matthew Herbert, Julian Stallabrass and Cecilia Wee.

- The words of artist and Tate Trustee Bob and Roberta Smith on the Tate Board as “BP is becoming beyond the pale”.

- Voices from ‘outside the gallery’ in communities affected by BP operations.

The publication asks not if but when will oil sponsorship of the arts will end as the deadly damage to societies and ecosystems through the industry becomes ever more widespread (much as the tobacco companies once supported by cultural institutions were realised to be wrong). It challenges us to have the collective courage to free our cultural institutions from oil companies and create culture beyond oil, where art is put back into the service of life.

Ruppe Koselleck at Tate Modern. Photo: Jeffrey Blackler

Each limited edition copy features a unique artwork by Ruppe Koselleck made with crude oil collected from the Deepwater Horizon catastrophe. The artworks were publicly created over the course of 30 November at the Free Word Centre ahead of a launch event that evening.