{"id":66336,"date":"2025-08-14T12:17:07","date_gmt":"2025-08-14T12:17:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/66336\/"},"modified":"2025-08-14T12:17:07","modified_gmt":"2025-08-14T12:17:07","slug":"huge-butchered-artwork-installed-on-north-sea-gas-rig-by-greenpeace-activists-greenpeace","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/66336\/","title":{"rendered":"Huge \u2018Butchered\u2019 artwork installed on North Sea gas rig by Greenpeace activists | Greenpeace"},"content":{"rendered":"

Greenpeace activists have scaled a gas rig, stretched a 96 sq metre canvas across its side and stained it crimson, in a protest designed with Anish Kapoor<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The work, in the North Sea, is believed to be the first piece of fine art exhibited from a working gas extraction platform.<\/p>\n

\u201cI call it Butchered,\u201d the British sculptor told the Guardian. \u201cI\u2019m referring to the butchering of our environment. It is at the simplest level blood on a canvas. A reference to the destruction \u2013 the bleeding \u2013 of our globe of our state, of being.<\/p>\n

Early on Wednesday, Greenpeace<\/a> activists, who had waited for the most favourable weather conditions, sailed onboard the Arctic Sunrise to the Shell rig Skiff, 45 nautical miles off the coast of Norfolk.<\/p>\n

Seven experienced climbers scaled the rig, hoisted a 12-metre by 8-metre truss on to its side and stretched the vast canvas across it. They then used a high-pressure hose to spray a deep-red stain on it.<\/p>\n

The blood-like solution, designed specifically for the artwork, was a mix of seawater, beetroot powder and non-toxic, food-based pond dye, Greenpeace said.<\/p>\n

The artwork, erected during the fourth heatwave this summer, was intended to convey \u201cthe vast suffering extreme weather is causing\u201d, a source at the environmental campaign group said.<\/p>\n

Kapoor said he wanted the work to dispel the collective amnesia around the real causes of climate breakdown. \u201cThere seems to be, first of all, a collective will to not look at who are the real perpetrators of global warming,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Activists created a vast crimson stain with 1,000 litres of blood-red non-toxic liquid. Photograph: Andrew McConnell\/Greenpeace<\/p>\n

\u201cWe seem to live in an age of denials \u2013 I mean [by] president of the US of bloody A, and the rest, and many others. And then there is the sense amongst us all that we are culpable, we, each individual. \u2018Oh I use that much less plastic, or if I switch the lights off, or if I whatever.\u2019<\/p>\n

\u201cOur collective global witness, if you like, to global warming is less than 10% of the actual numbers. Most of it is caused by these big oil and gas companies.\u201d<\/p>\n

Greenpeace has a long history of taking action on fossil fuel and other environmentally damaging installations at sea. Last year, Shell agreed to settle a controversial multimillion-dollar lawsuit against Greenpeace over an action the year before in which activists occupied a moving oil platform off the coast of the Canary Islands for 13 days.<\/p>\n

Kapoor said he had been \u201cdeeply interested\u201d in Greenpeace\u2019s \u201cheroic\u201d actions for some time, and for several years had been liaising with Greenpeace UK to find a way he could be more actively involved.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd then there was this idea about a year ago to do something on the gas rig, oil rig,\u201d he said. \u201cI thought about what one could do and came up with Butchered.\u201d<\/p>\n

skip past newsletter promotion<\/a><\/p>\n

The planet’s most important stories. Get all the week’s environment news – the good, the bad and the essential<\/p>\n

Privacy Notice: Newsletters may contain info about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. For more information see our Privacy Policy<\/a>. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy<\/a> and Terms of Service<\/a> apply.<\/p>\n

There was no guarantee the work could be properly executed, and Wednesday\u2019s action had in fact been a second attempt, after an initial go at it had failed last year, Kapoor told the Guardian.<\/p>\n

The artists called on \u201ccolleagues, friends, people of all kinds\u201d to join in with protest.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is our duty as citizens to \u2026 have at least some kind of political agenda,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s tragic that governments all over the world are forbidding protests \u2013 not just forbidding it, actually arresting people. What\u2019s wrong with us? this is our right and duty as citizens to protest and keep our consciousness alive.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf people wish to protest about Palestine, so they should, and much else. To say we\u2019re living in fascist times seems to be an underestimate of what levels of freedom the individual is allowed today.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Greenpeace activists have scaled a gas rig, stretched a 96 sq metre canvas across its side and stained…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":66337,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[49,50,51,47,52,48],"class_list":["post-66336","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66336","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=66336"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66336\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/66337"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=66336"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=66336"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=66336"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}