On Sunday April 3rd, Art Not Oil coalition member group BP or not BP? occupied the Great Court of the BP-sponsored British Museum with a 'disobedient exhibition'. Called 'A History of BP in 10 Objects', the exhibition featured artifacts submitted by frontline communities around the world who are fighting back against the impacts of BP's operations.
"Street corners are used to maximum effect by British youth homelessness charity Depaul UK in a new campaign created by Publicis London.
The idea is to show another side to homelessness to raise awareness of Depaul’s Nightstop–a service which provides emergency accommodation to homeless 16-to-25-year-olds–to recruit new volunteers.
The 15M movement in Spain grew out of a desire for liberation and greater access to social and political rights for marginalized groups. At its core the activists of 15M were visionaries and used voting for a utopian society as a creative act to reimagine the world they created. Reality is socially construed by the forces that determine individual agency.
In March of 2022, JR, with the help of 100 volunteers, unfurled the portrait of five-year-old, Ukrainian refugee Valeriia in Lviv, Ukraine. Leaving Ukraine, JR saw firsthand how difficult it was for women and children to get to safety due to long queues at the border. In response, he released two NFTs of Valeriia as part of his solidarity project titled: Can Art Change the War?
Reading the introduction to Animal Farm by Christopher Hitchens a few years ago, I was stunned to learn that George Orwell, then a struggling writer in London, worked by letter with a group of refugees to publish the novel in Ukrainian in the displaced persons camps of postwar Europe.
The environment is one political topic that has become more significant in countries all around the world. One current example of this can be seen in Madrid with the Madrid Central program, introduced in an effort to lower carbon emissions in the city. With the new right winged candidate expected to be elected as the new president of the region, he plans to get rid of the program entirely.
Melissa is a down-to-earth, friendly woman in her 50s, and it seems that she has always met life with a certain amount of courage. She grew up on another continent, and after early motherhood, then divorce and a first career in business, she moved to the UK with her second husband. She then built another career working with survivors of domestic violence, before setting up a climate emergency centre in Abingdon, Oxfordshire.
"It appears that Banksy has struck again, this time painting the brick wall of the former Reading Prison in Berkshire, England, where Oscar Wilde was jailed for two years over his “indecent” affair with Lord Alfred Douglas.
Antigone, written by Sophocles approximately 441 BC, is the third of the three Thebans plays. Antigone is the daughter of the infamous Oedipus and Jocasta. Thebes has suffered from a plague, scandal, and civil war. Antigone's brothers, Eteocles and Polyneices died fighting each other for the throne. Antigone's uncle, Creon, now king of Thebes, decrees that Eteocles will be buried, but Polyneices will not be given burial right.
Face Your World was set up as a tailor-made educational program for the youngster to explore and participate in the process of city renewal. The project used Interactor software, an interactive tool to enable users to rebuild their neighborhood. The software creates a virtual environment which represents the neighborhood and enables users to see the result of its modification while it has been used.
*We would like to thank everyone who who participated in a very successful first Butterflies for Bealtaine*
For the month of May, we invited all ages to creatively respond to the theme of The Butterfly and to share a change they wish for on a personal, community or global level.
In Ireland as in many parts of the world we have been in a quarantine situation because of the global pandemic. This environment informed our project.
On the one-year anniversary of the massive BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, artist-activists at Liberate Tate staged a guerrilla performance in the Tate Britain galleries to highlight the museum's ties to BP.
In 1998 Portuguese born artist Paula Rego created a series of work entitled Untitled. The Abortion Pastels. Rego created her work in response to a referendum to legalise abortion in Portugal, which was very narrowly defeated. Each canvas depicted the image of a woman undergoing an unsafe abortion. When the series was exhibited in the Portuguese capital, Lisbon, Rego recalled the whispered secrets of women in the gallery while looking at her artworks.
In 2012, VOW Media worked with young girls - who have been victimized by, or are at the risk of falling victim to “loverboys”, as well as girls who have gone through severe traumatic experiences, such as repeated emotional, physical and/or sexual abuse – in a series of workshops where they learned how to utilize different forms of media to create their very own self-portrait with photography, radio, and video.
A disability / textile arts project, challenging assumptions about disabled artists & highlighting shoddy treatment of disabled people by current government:
https://shoddyexhibition.wordpress.com/
The White Bikes are the best known acts of creative activism by the Dutch group Provo. The political wing of the Provos won a seat on the city council of Amsterdam, and developed the "White Plans".
At Theresa May's speech to the Conservative Party conference, comedian Simon Brodkin crept up to the stage and handed the Prime Minister a P45 form (the form that bosses in the UK use to formally fire their employees), telling her "Boris told me to do it."
The "Real Time" series by Maarten Baas is an avant-garde collection of art installations and functional timepieces that question the very basics of how to measure and experience time. It has, therefore, been a unique mix of performance art with functional design since 2009. Baas reimagines how time may be seen in his various installations in a provoking, innovative, engaging, and reflective manner for all audiences.
The political artist I chose to investigate is Ruth Peche, a Spanish sculptor and photographer. Her themes tend to center around plastic waste and the impact it has on the environment, using this as a muse for describing the relationship human society has with the natural world. Peche’s interest in art activism, particularly with themes of preserving the environment, is something that was sparked for her in during her childhood years.
A collective resistance movement dedicated to reasserting communal ownership of common spaces, Reclaim the Streets staged its first action on Camden High Street in 1995, when activists closed the road to vehicle traffic to make way for a street party. Combining the tactics of non-violent direct action with 90's UK rave culture, organizers kept the location secret until the last moment to preempt police interception.
Even though Spain is constitutionally defined as a non-confessional nation, the Catholic Church still holds great power. For example, the Catholic Church is exempt from paying certain taxes, and can reclaim certain buildings as their property. This often creates frictions and conflicts with the activist groups and organizations that would prefer a more secular political environment.
Wheelbarrows full of washable paint were poured along the Kensington road to mark a year since Russia launched its invasion. Four people have been arrested for the protest.
As we’ve already found out, gender inequality exists in all parts of the world, but besides discriminative attitudes, women also suffer from wage discrimination.
According to statistics, women’s earnings in the US “were 77% of men’s in 2011”, while in Switzerland, women earned “roughly 20% less than equally skilled men in comparable positions”.