Abstract

*Shortlisted for the Bread and Roses Prize, 2016*

*Shortlisted for the Green Carnation Prize, 2015*

* Shortlisted for the Academy of British Cover Design Awards, 2015*

Artwash is an intervention into the unsavoury role of the Big Oil company's sponsorship of the arts in Britain. Based on the high profile campaign 'Liberate Tate', Mel Evans targets Chevron, ExxonMobil, BP and Shell's collaboration with institutions such as the Tate in an attempt to end the poisonous relationship forever.

Based on years of undercover research, grassroots investigation and activism as well as performance and cultural interventions, Mel Evans draws together the story of the campaign and its journey which has gone from strength to strength. Artwash shows how corporate sponsorship of the arts erases unsightly environmental destruction and obscures the strategies of oil company PR executives who rely on cultural philanthropy.

The conclusion sounds a note of hope: major institutions (such as the Southbank Centre) have already agreed to cut sponsorship, and tribunals are happening which are taking these relationships to task. Artists and employees are developing new methods of work which publicly confront the oil companies. Like the anti-tobacco campaign before it, this will be an important cultural and political turn for years to come.
'Sharp, pointed and persuasive'
ArtReview
'Provide[s] a a vigorous overview from an artist's perspective of a serious issue facing our major cultural institutions in these uncertain times'
Times Literary Supplement
'Charts campaigners' journey, drills down into why BP and Shell have snuggled up to our major cultural institutions, and details the impact of BP's Tate sponsorship on the gallery's reputation, staff, and artists, questioning who benefits from the 25-year relationship'
VICE
'Places the end of oil sponsorship within a much longer history of standing up to corporations and winning'
New Statesman
'A rapidly paced immensely readable breakdown of the oil business and the laundering of its image through patronage of the arts'
Conrad Atkinson, Emeritus Professor, University of California
'This fascinating book delves deeply into the pressing debates about art sponsorship, one of the more insidious tools that the fossil fuel industry deploys to build and maintain its power, undermining the critical role of art in our democracies in the process'
Naomi Klein, author of This Changes Everything and The Shock Doctrine
'[Evans'] infectious optimism is the most striking feature of this persuasively argued and unashamedly idealistic book'
New Internationalist
'Critically discusses the impact of corporate sponsorship on the arts and exposes the motives of donors to shocking effect'
Big Issue in the North