A CLIMATE-CONSCIOUS art collective closed off the Tate Modern at the weekend with a 25-hour live installation in protest against the art museum’s links to oil company BP.

Liberate Tate’s 75 performers took over the building’s Turbine Hall on Saturday morning, covering 1,000 square metres of floorspace with quotes and sketches lifted from dystopian novels. BP is listed as one of the Tate’s major sponsors, with annual donations of £224,000.

Campaigners argued that “the company’s presence in galleries and museums is a stain on our culture,” due to its role in environmental disasters.

“We continued our performance throughout the night to allow the words we wrote to resound and let Tate know the tide is rising against its continued support for BP,” said Liberate Tate member Yasmin De Silva.

She charged the transnational with “a shocking history of environmental disasters, human rights abuses and lobbying against climate change legislation.”

The “unsanctioned performance,” dubbed Time Piece, went on into Sunday afternoon, with artists taking shifts.

Passages from Naomi Klein’s new book This Changes Everything and Margate Atwood’s Oryx and Crake were written down in charcoal, next to figures from the UN’s latest report on climate change.

Tate Modern visitors reportedly applauded as the black-clad collective slowly exited the gallery.

National and international corporations including Facebook and Waitrose have recently cut their links to the fossil fuel industry.

Environmentalists demand that Tate ceases all agreements with BP before the Paris climate summit later this year.
The sponsorship is up for review in 2016.