Greenpeace: Oil on canvas

On October 5, New Zealand suffered its worst ever maritime environmental disaster. The MV Rena cargo ship ran aground and spilled 350 tonnes of oil into the Bay of Plenty, killing 20,000 birds.

As tragic as that was, a deep sea oil spill could be over 1000 times worse.*

The New Zealand government has opened its waters to foreign oil companies for deep sea oil prospecting. They promised that it would be safe and that they could control any environmental impact from an oil spill.

But if we couldn't control a small spill on the surface of the water, how will we ever hope to stop a massive spill 3kms below it?

To emphasise the risks of deep-sea oil, Greenpeace asked Mojo Auckland to use the smaller scale Rena oil spill as an example.

We created hundreds of posters and 10 canvas artworks using the oil covered bodies of birds killed during the disaster as a memorial and a warning against a much greater catastrophe.

Each print was an original, made with actual birds and oil from Rena.
The agency then put these real oil prints up as street posters and opened a pop up gallery for an "oil on canvas" exhibition in the CBD. The price of entry was simply to sign the petition.

They also created a TVC using the images of the prints and sent out individual DM packs with sealed oil prints to media and celebrities.

* Deepwater Horizon, Gulf of Mexico – 627,000 tonnes.