OIL INDUSTRY SPONSORSHIP TO BECOME ENDANGERED SPECIES IN 2007?

In 2007, the oil industry is seeing its reputation buffeted by a series of disasters. For BP, these include the deaths of 15 of its workers in a Texas refinery fire in 2005 where safety was seen as an unaffordable luxury, and the release of 270,000 gallons of crude oil from a rusting Alaskan pipeline in 2006. Shell is also struggling unsuccessfully to uphold some semblance of 'corporate social responsibility', particularly since its plans for a massive gas pipeline and refinery in Rossport, north west Ireland, are being resisted with such courage by local inhabitants and supporters throughout the UK.

And all this before a word is breathed about climate change.

Could this be why both companies are investing such energy in sponsoring big, well-regarded public institutions like the National Portrait Gallery and Natural History Museum? They have made themselves vulnerable through a combination of rapacious greed and systematic dishonesty. 2007 could be the year when grassroots creativity and resistance to oil industry greenwash holes their reputations below the waterline and allows some real, constructive anger to flood in to the public response to climate meltdown. But for that to happen, we need you to be a part of it, by contributing work to our exhibitions, by boycotting oil-sponsored events, and by pressuring the institutions for change.

As well as helping to unravel this global web of war, climate change, deceit and profit, the fourth year of Art Not Oil is about supporting small, local initiatives - exhibitions, demonstrations, direct actions, village fetes etc. - that challenge the status quo, community by community. And it's about the way this insane system profits each time one small flame of creativity is snuffed out - when I give up on writing that song and switch on the TV, or when you put down your paintbrush or camera and find yourself halfway to Oxford Street before you know it for a consumer blowout.

If there's going to be a revolution that has any chance of building something constructive from the many collapses that our heading our way, it will have to be founded at least in part on our creativity, our individuality, our solidarity with the fate of our brothers and sisters in the same street as well as right across the world, and the joy that resistance is made of.

So keep your art flowing in to the 2007 exhibitions - turn your visions, nightmares, anger and love into creative resistance!

** The Art Not Oil galleries currently feature over 200 pieces of work; the 2007 exhibition will be online only. Please send us copies of your work via email, and we’ll take it from there.

** Shell is the new sponsor of the Natural History Museum’s Wildlife Photographer of the Year exhibition, and there's a 'SHELL'S WILD LIE' campaign and counter-exhibition underway. ('Shell's Wild Lie' (SWL) is currently showing in Belfast, also currently hosting the Shell Wildlife Photographer exhibition, and it will be seen all over the UK and Ireland during 2007-8). 2007 is the year the Museum will decide whether to renew its contract with Shell – let’s send them a clear message that such a deal is unacceptable: write to Museum boss Michael Dixon:  m.dixon@nhm.ac.uk, send us your photos, artworks & ideas, and see www.shelloiledwildlife.org.uk, www.artnotoil.org.uk/gallery/v/Shell/

Leaflets, postcards, images & info available on request

Art Not Oil and Shell’s Wild Lie are projects of London Rising Tide: www.londonrisingtide.org.uk
www.artnotoil.org.uk
www.nationalpetroleumgallery.org.uk
Tel: 07708 794665
 info@artnotoil.org.uk

See also:
www.risingtide.org.uk

THE DARK STUFF

* Shell’s vast development on Russia’s Sakhalin Island will decimate local fishing and despoil one of the few remaining feeding grounds of the world’s last 100 Western Pacific Gray whales; www.pacificenvironment.org

* ExxonMobil still pays climate sceptics to challenge the consensus that climate change is man-made and here now; www.exxonsecrets.org

*‘Court Declares Gas Flaring Illegal In Nigeria’ (Nov ’05 headline) But flaring still continues and Shell is set to appeal; www.foe.co.uk/resource/press_releases/communities_sue_shell_to_s_20062005.html

*‘Exposed: BP, its pipeline, and an environmental time-bomb’, Independent (26.6.04) on BP’s US-inspired and protected Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan oil & gas pipelines, which will be a human rights disaster & produce over 150m tonnes of CO2 each year for 40 years, causing untold damage to the world’s climate; www.platformlondon.org/carbonweb/showitem.asp?article=32&parent=5&link=Y&gp=3

*BP, Shell & Exxon are doing their best to expand fossil fuel production by at least 3.5% per year. BP invests less than 3% of its annual budget in solar & other renewable energy sources, much less than it ploughs into advertising and sponsorship.

* In 2006, as BP oilworkers see their personal safety, union rights and wages in tatters (www.oilc.org), BP boss Lord Browne’s own salary (including share options) soared to £19m; www.guardian.co.uk/executivepay/story/0,,1731205,00.html

Other oil companies are no better…

See also www.risingtide.org.uk, www.carbonweb.org, www.oilwatch.org.ec, www.shellfacts.com, www.colombiasolidarity.org.uk, amazonwatch.org

THINGS YOU CAN DO:

1. Send us your art!
2. Cut your CO2 emissions: boycott all petrol stations, stay away from airplanes, bath with a friend, get green leccy...
3. Take action on the root causes of climate chaos wherever and however you can, though especially at the Camp for Climate Action, August 14th-21st 2007 www.climatecamp.org.uk
4. Boycott the BP Portrait Award and other similarly sullied prizes.
5. Tell the following people how you feel about oil company sponsorship:
 snairne@npg.org.uk [Sandy Nairne, NPG, re. BP]
 nicholas.serota@tate.org.uk [Tate Britain, re. BP]
 jon.tucker@nmsi.ac.uk [Science Museum, re. BP]
 info@barbican.org.uk [John Tusa, Barbican, re. BP]
 m.dixon@nhm.ac.uk [Michael Dixon, Natural History Museum, re. BP]
 tony.hall@roh.org.uk [Royal Opera House, re. BP]
 directorate@thebritishmuseum.ac.uk [Neil MacGregor, British Museum, re. BP]
 information@ng-london.org.uk [Charles Saumarez Smith, National Gallery, re. Shell, BP & Exxon]
 info@nationaltheatre.org.uk [Nicholas Hytner, National Theatre, re. Shell]

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Begin forwarded message:
Date: 21 March 2007 20:36:30 GMT

Subject: Globalization & Climate Justice, Art & Direct Action: The Beehive / Rising Tide tour...

 http://portland.indymedia.org/en/2007/03/356203.shtml

 http://www.beehivecollective.org/