Greenpeace stages Anish Kapoor art protest on British gas platform

Greenpeace activists have unfurled a massive anti-fossil fuel canvas by renowned sculptor Anish Kapoor on a North Sea platform in a rare protest on an active offshore gas rig, the group said on Thursday.

Seven Greenpeace climbers scaled Shell’s Skiff gas platform, 45 nautical miles off the Norfolk coast in eastern England, and attached the 12m (40 feet) by eight-metre (26 feet) work, entitled BUTCHERED.

They then pumped 1,000 litres of a “blood-red” mixture, composed of seawater, beetroot powder, and non-toxic dye, onto the canvas.

British-Indian artist Kapoor said the work reflected the “butchery” that oil companies are “inflicting on our planet.”

BUTCHERED is a “visual scream that gives voice to the calamitous cost of the climate crisis, often on the most marginalised communities across the globe,” he added.

Renowned artist Anish Kapoor’s work titled ‘Butchered’, installed by Greenpeace climbers, hangs from a Shell platform in the North Sea on Aug 13. Photo: Reuters

A Shell UK spokesperson said the protest was “extremely dangerous, involved illegally trespassing, and put their own and others’ lives at risk.”

The stunt came as much of southern Europe suffered a relenless heatwave with the tinderbox conditions helping the spread of many deadly wildfires.

The extreme heat, which scientists say human-driven climate change is intensifying, has fuelled blazes and strained firefighters from Greece to Portugal.

Parts of Britain also experienced the fourth heatwave of the summer season, with several regions in England facing drought conditions.

Philip Evans, senior campaigner at Greenpeace UK, said the artwork was a “visual gut-punch that makes visible the suffering and damage caused by the oil and gas industry right at the place where the harm begins.”

Shell and Greenpeace last December settled a lawsuit brought by the British energy giant after environmental protesters boarded a ship carrying an oil and gas platform near the Canary Islands for several days.

In that agreement, Greenpeace also agreed that demonstrators would not go within 500m of three Shell North Sea sites for five years, and a fourth site for a decade. – AFP