Sp3 — Splish Splash: Climate Activists vs. A Gallery Near You
UK | “If you do something that can get ignored, it gets ignored”
WORDS AND ILLUSTRATIONS BY BRANDON HICKS
PHOTOGRAPHY COURTESY OF JUST STOP OIL
As the global climate crisis worsens, activist groups across Europe have become increasingly aggressive in their demonstration tactics. Their methods have been condemned as “completely unacceptable” by British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, and at least one MP has called for certain environmental organisations to be labelled as “terrorist groups.” In a remark highlighting the ideological schism between these environmentalists and the state, former Home Secretary Suella Braverman labelled protestors “the tofu-eating wokerati.”
Just Stop Oil, the most well known of these collectives, first rose to prominence in March of 2022 with protests disrupting sporting events, vandalising businesses, and blocking oil supply routes. Their demands? That the UK government cease all fossil fuel licensing and production agreements.
The demonstrations indeed provoked the government into taking action, albeit not in the direction the organisation had hoped for. In October, the House of Commons passed a Public Order Bill to create stiffer penalties for the “criminal, disruptive and self-defeating guerrilla tactics” of groups like Just Stop Oil and Extinction Rebellion. However, the protesters have remained undeterred, vowing to continue protesting under the threat of any penalty, barring death.
Just Stop Oil first captured the attention of the art world in July of 2022, when two protestors glued their hands to the frame of John Constable’s 1821 painting The Hay Wain at the National Gallery in London. The pair covered the bucolic scene with a dystopian depiction of the same image, and were subsequently arrested. Similar demonstrations followed, targeting notable works by Vincent van Gogh and Johannes Vermeer among others, often using tomato soup, spray paint, and/or glue.
Owing to security measures like protective glass, none of the artwork has been permanently damaged in these attacks. However, the group has since stated that they have considered escalating the attacks to include “slashing” paintings, citing the example of suffragette Mary Richardson, who famously took a meat cleaver to Diego Velázquez’s The Rokeby Venus in 1914.
Cannopy Magazine spoke with Just Stop Oil spokesperson Alex De Koning to discuss the group’s tactics, philosophy, and inevitable backlash.
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