"Members of the Reclaim Shakespeare Company jumped on stage at the Noël Coward theatre to deliver another surprise anti-BP performance. Just before the second half of a BP-sponsored Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC) performance of Much Ado About Nothing was due to begin, the three actor-vists performed a short Shakespeare-inspired piece.
Tate Modern considers activists' wind turbine for art collection: Liberate Tate, an art collective who object to BP sponsorship, have offered the 16 metre turbine blade to the gallery
A 1.5 tonne, 16.5 metre-long wind turbine blade carried last month to the Tate Modern by artists objecting to the gallery's sponsorship by oil company BP is being considered for the national art collection.
The upcoming year of fashion shows look set to be charged with climate change and environmental themes.
This year, more than ever before, we have seen that the business of fashion, at the highest levels, is responding to the push to take the very pressing issue of climate change and environmental damage seriously.
After artists learned that London's Design Museum was connected to Leonardo, a large arms dealing company, and hosted an event for them, many of the artists featured in their Hope to Nope: Graphics and Politics 2008-2018 asked the museum for their work to be removed. After receiving no response, one third of the show's artists removed their work from the show.
Estados de excepción (States of Exception) is series of participatory cultural interventions created for women to freely and joyfully exercise our rights in public and secure environments, currently being produced in Mexico and abroad.
I was 24 years old. We were in danger. The Israeli planes were flying raids overhead. And I was designing posters." Hosni Radwan won't easily forget the conditions in the Beirut offices of the PLO Information Department, as an exhibition of the work it produced opens in London.
Olafur Eliasson , the Danish-Icelandic artist. Some of his exceptional artworks focus on climate and environmental changes. In 2003, he installed The Weather Project , which remains one of Tate Modern’s popular installations. He is also known for his freestanding waterfall in Versailles , his installation in which he installed a riverbed in a museum , and his gigantic rainbow installation in Aarhus, Denmark.
The group Art Not Oil did a campaign to raise awareness about the oil industry, and their funding of Art. "Art Not Oil has campaigned against Big Oil cultural sponsorship since 2004.
The Vivienne Foundation exists to honour, protect and continue the legacy of Vivienne's creativity and activism.
Since the start of her career in the 1970s, Vivienne was renowned not only for her fashion design, but also her activism. Vivienne always utilised her platform of prestige to make the world a better place.
Singaporean artist Lee Wen’s series Journey of a Yellow Man (1992–2012), one of his most famous and long-standing performances, was not simply a personal affront, it was a political affront. At the intersection of Asian art history, critical race theory, and migration and diasporic studies, one is never far (enough away) from the chromatic framing of race and ethnicity: yellow race, yellow peril, yellow face, the forever foreigner.
Activism imitated art when Justice 4 Grenfell protesters drove three provocative signs through the streets of London. In a clever nod to Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, the Oscar-nominated film directed by Martin McDonagh, the billboards were bright red, with black letters that read:
71 DEAD
AND STILL NO ARRESTS?
HOW COME?
On March 10, 1914, Mary Richardson slashed Velasquez's "Rokeby Venus" with a small axe during public hours at the National Gallery in London. A militant suffragette protesting the force-feeding of imprisoned suffragettes in prison (and the Cat and Mouse Act which released the starving women only until they were slightly healthier only to imprison them again), Richardson released this statement after her arrest:
A new piece of art by Banksy was unveiled in London on Monday in a protest targeting one of the world's largest arms fairs. The work will be displayed for a week at Art the Arms Fair, an exhibition set up to oppose the Defence Systems & Equipment International (DSEi) exhibition being held in the British capital this week.
A group of women arrested at the DSEI arms fair in 2013 have begun private prosecution proceedings against arms companies who exhibited illegal weapons at the fair.
Doris Salcedo talked extensively with victims of the violence in Colombia. For the project titled Unland she spoke specifically with children who had witnessed the murder of their parents. This piece was a poetic response and representation of their testimony. Salcedo combined halves of tables together to make a whole. In the seam where the tables joined Salcedo meticulously sewed the tables together using white silk thread, dark hair and bone.
Danish-Icelandic artist Olafur Eliasson has extracted 30 blocks of glacial ice from the waters surrounding Greenland and placed them in public spaces across London, where they will be left to melt.
Called Ice Watch, the temporary installation is meant to serve as a visual reminder of the impact of climate change on the environment.
On July 23rd 2011 a newly formed organization Multi-Story performed Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring in a multi-story car park in Peckham Rye London. In doing so it completely subverted the entrenched traditions of the performance of classical music. The organization used student musicians and did not charge admission.
The Brat Summer movement can be directly traced back to the release of Charli XCX's album "Brat" in 2024. Known for her boundary-pushing pop sound and fierce persona, Charli XCX used "Brat" as a platform to explore themes of defiance, self-empowerment and the rejection of societal expectations.
Bob and Roberta Smith has been at the forefront of activist art for 2 decades; so who better to ask about how art is responding to these politically bleak times?
World Microphone (世界麦克风) is an organization created by students (most of them are Chinese) located in London. The organization has an account in RED, which is a popular social media in China. It often holds interviews and movements on the street in London, talking about world culture, food, and travel. Then, it makes short videos based on these interviews and movements and posts the videos on RED.
This diagram of the 'Brookes' slave ship is probably the most widely copied and powerful image used by the abolitionist campaigners. It depicts the ship loaded to its full capacity - 454 people crammed into the hold.The 'Brookes' sailed the passage from Liverpool via the Gold Coast in Africa to Jamaica in the West Indies.
Museums and art galleries are not usually the sites of feminist political protest. Yet over the past couple of years, before the lockdown, gallery visitors all over the UK had noticed a small, determined activist whose modus operandi is “Small signs, big questions, fabulous wardrobe”.
Protesters bathed an entrance to the Tate Britain in mock oil provoking anger from guests attending a party to mark 20 years of BP's sponsorship of the flagship gallery. A dozen veiled artists, angered by the Tate's continuing involvement with the oil giant, spat vats of treacle before covering the area with feathers as guests arrived.
These thirteen life-like sculptures resemble familiar politicians, admirals, generals, bishops, and dictators. Portrayed as frail seniors, they sit dozing off and drooling in electric wheelchairs. They roll on a slow collision course, crashing into each other like bumper cars.