BP to end controversial sponsorship of Tate in 2017 (independent.co.uk).
“BP is to end its controversial sponsorship of Tate in 2017 after nearly three decades with the oil giant, The Independent can reveal. Blaming the ‘extremely challenging business environment’ rather than years of protests against the long-running partnership, the corporate sponsor will part company with the institution next year. Tate said the company’s long-term support had been an ‘outstanding example of patronage’. The oil and gas company is also one of the most divisive corporate sponsors of the arts in Britain, with BP and Tate repeatedly targeted by environmental protesters. In recent years, protesters have performed a ‘mass exorcism’ in the Turbine Hall at Tate Modern, and poured out oil-like molasses at Tate’s annual summer party.”
Indeed, but many may have thought that was just conceptual protest art looking for opportunity and home and although demonstrative of the persona non grata status of oil companies and their actions are actually doing bugger all to reduce our depenancy on those oil leviathans to power our motor scooters and factory forge power plants to power internet conections for lumbersexuals to save tress while chopping iPadWood, eat sugary New Sincerity cereal and pour social justice warrior vitriol on nudity—present in a lot of art conceptual, modern or otherwise—shared except with them selfie-style on F’book.
Trivia: For those, and there are many, for whom the “conceptual” in conceptual art—which the Tate Modern is the de rigueur London home for—is still a puzzle missing a brick placed specifically and artistically on a gallery floor, a simply answer is to think the idea, and what it represents, is actually more important than the thing itself, be it splash n’ drip painting, brick puzzle, dead shark in a tank or incomprehensible video making some put aesthetic palm to chin, a movement in reaction to the plastic arts not being considered as intellectually worthy as say, poetry, and we all know intellectually deep people are the movers and shakers in the world, leaving no Twitter followers for anyone else.
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