Projects tagged "London"

Slashing the Rokeby Venus
Practitioner:
Mary Raleigh Richardson, WSPU
Date:
Mar 10 1914
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:
Favorite 
3
When artists go to war: inside the PLO's information department
Practitioner:
Palestine Liberation Organization
Date:
May 12 2014
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.
Favorite 
4
BP protest at Tate Britain
Practitioner:
Good Crude Britannia
Date:
Jun 29 2010
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.
Favorite 
7
Banksy's new artwork takes aim at arms trade
Practitioner:
Banksy
Date:
Sep 11 2017
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.
Favorite 
3
Harris Reed is building a fantasy world for gender-fluid fashion
Practitioner:
Harris Reed
Date:
Feb 18 2021
Last June, Harris Reed became a member of the “Class of 2020” -- the crop of young fashion talent who graduated into an industry on rocky ground due to the pandemic. Over the eight months that have passed since earning his cap and gown at Central Saint Martins, Harris seems to have done a good job of finding his feet.
Favorite 
3
Invisible Homeless
Practitioner:
Luke Jerram, 1625 Independent People
Date:
Dec 22 2015
Artist Luke Jerram created a genderless sleeping figure made of glass lying on a piece of cardboard and exhibited in the streets of London. The artist said in an interview "For every person you see sleeping on the streets, there are many others sleeping in hostels, squats and other forms of unsatisfactory and insecure accommodation.
Favorite 
3
Art, Activism, and the City: Illuminating Social Change
Practitioner:
Donkeys
Date:
Mar 13 2025
The creative fusion of art and activism in urban spaces has propelled the British collective Led by Donkeys into the spotlight, garnering millions of views for their interventions on social media. Their critical visual occupations - whether billboard messages during the day or large-scale projections at night - raise a compelling question: which medium holds the greater persuasive power?
Favorite 
1
Disarm the Gallery: Protests end National Gallery's arms trade links
Practitioner:
Stop the Arms Fair
Date:
Oct 10 2012
The National Gallery's long-standing sponsorship arrangement with weapons manufacturer Finmeccanica has ended, following a campaign by Campaign Against Arms Trade to 'Disarm the Gallery.' The arrangement has been terminated one year early and just weeks before the next protest event was planned.
Favorite 
1
The Whole World Is An Art School
Practitioner:
Bob and Roberta Smith
Date:
Feb 13 2018
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?
Favorite 
5
Clandestine Insurgent Rebel Clown Army
Practitioner:
CIRCA
Date:
May 13 2003
To some, the Clandestine Insurgent Rebel Clown Army (CIRCA) might appear to be but a ragged bunch of activists sporting false noses, a smudge of grease paint, camouflage pants and bad wigs. And those people may be right. But it is also a highly disciplined army of professional clowns, a militia of authentic fools, a battalion of true buffoons.
Favorite 
4
The Poster Workshop
Practitioner:
Anonymous
Date:
May 1 1968
Between the late 1960s and 1970s numerous alternative printshops were set up across the UK, with the founding objective of producing, providing or facilitating the cheap and safe printing of radical materials. They were started by libertarians, aligned and non-aligned Marxists, anarchists and feminists, and as such were constitutive of the fractured and fractious politics of the post-1968 left.
Favorite 
2
The body as a living artwork: Olivier de Sagazan’s Transfiguration
Practitioner:
Olivier de Sagazan
Date:
Jan 1 2024
As the audience enter, Olivier de Sagazan is pacing the stage, deep in thought. A slight, barefooted figure dressed in suit and tie, he circles in and out the shadows, head bowed, sometimes muttering to himself. As the audience settle and hush, his footsteps gradually become more audible (the floor is mic-ed) and begin to pound like a calling drum.
Favorite 
2
Empty the Cages
Practitioner:
Dan Witz, PETA
Date:
Sep 1 2014
Fifty-six-year-old Dan Witz — who originally hails from Chicago but lives in Brooklyn — has been producing street art in New York since the seventies. And not just any street art. Wondrous works that trick the eye and often elude passersby altogether. Oh, but when one realizes what he or she is seeing, it’s pure revelation.
Favorite 
2
Dirty Money in Art & Big Pharma
Practitioner:
Nan Goldin & P.A.I.N.
Date:
Jul 20 2018
Between 1995 and 2017 the highly addictive painkiller OxyContin brought in $35 billion USD in revenue for Purdue Pharma, most of which went directly into the hands of the Sackler family.
Favorite 
2
Tracey Emin’s “My Bed” Ignored Society’s Expectations of Women
Practitioner:
Tracey Emin
Date:
Jan 1 1999
When Tracey Emin aired her dirty laundry in the 1999 Turner Prize exhibition at Tate Britain, she set a new standard for confessional art. She conceived of the installation, titled My Bed (1998), after a long, bedridden bender following a bad break-up. When Emin finally left her sheets, she examined the mess she’d created.
Favorite 
4
Multi-Story-Rite of Spring in a Car Park
Practitioner:
Multi-Storey
Date:
Jul 23 2011
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.
Favorite 
2
OurGoods Trade School
Practitioner:
Rich Watts, Louise Ma, OurGoods
Date:
Jan 1 2010
Trade School is a self-organised, alternative learning space that runs on barter. It was started in 2010 in New York’s Lower East Side by Rich Watts, Louise Ma, and Caroline Woolard of OurGoods.org, a creative barter network. Over 800 students participated in 76 single-session classes during 35 days. Anyone can teach a class, and students sign up by agreeing to meet the barter requests of teachers.
Favorite 
4
ACTIVISTS POUR CONCRETE OVER 'ANTI-HOMELESS' SPIKES
Practitioner:
London Black Revolutionaries
Date:
Jun 13 2014
The war against London's "anti-homeless" spikes escalated today from sign-waving to radical criminal action In the small hours of the morning, some activists dressed as builders poured concrete over the metal spikes outside a Tesco Metro on Regent Street, before vowing to strike again.
Favorite 
4
HOME
Practitioner:
Julia Vogl
Date:
Jul 27 2012
In partnership with Southwark Council, Peckham Settlement, Peckham Space and Resonance FM. Supported using public funding by the National Lottery through Arts Council England and Kickstarter Campaign supporters.
Favorite 
3
Ice Watch
Practitioner:
Olafur Eliasson
Date:
Dec 11 2018
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.
Favorite 
5
Wearable Shelter for Syrian Refugees
Practitioner:
HuffPost Lifestyle
Date:
Feb 19 2016
UK design students focusing on the use of design that moves beyond exclusivity, wealth, entitlement, and privilege, have created a coat that is also a shelter. The functional pocketed coat that converts into a tent and a sleeping bag, is intended for Syrian refugees. The students under the guidance of Dr.
Favorite 
3
Estados de excepción
Practitioner:
Lorena Wolffer
Date:
Nov 25 2013
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.
Favorite 
5
Becoming an Image
Practitioner:
Cassils
Date:
Jun 1 2012
Cassils' Becoming an Image confronts issues of queer and trans visibility, bodily violence, and the politics of witnessing. The performance uses a powerful blend of media—including live action in darkness, flash photography, clay sculpture, and sound—to explore how trauma and resilience are physically and symbolically inscribed onto the queer body.
Favorite 
3
Old People's Home
Practitioner:
Sun Yuan and Peng Yu
Date:
Jul 12 2008
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.
Favorite 
4
Shibboleth
Practitioner:
Tate Modern, The Unilever Series
Date:
Oct 9 2007
Text taken from website:
Favorite 
3

Pages