Just Stop Oil activists may move to more serious damage to paintings, cut famous works to protest the development of new oil and gas fields, spokesman Alex de Koning said.
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The movement opposes the British government’s plan to allow oil and gas production from 46 fields in 2025. Activists have repeatedly staged protests, blocking major roads and sticking themselves to paintings in galleries.
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“Potentially it could come down to this one day in the future, yes,” de Koning said, when asked about stripping paintings if protests escalated.
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According to him, Just Stop Oil activists “do not want to do such things”, but they intend to do everything possible to stop the extraction of fossil fuels. If protests escalate, the movement “will be inspired” by examples from the past, in particular by the actions of British suffragettes at the beginning of the last century, who “furiously carved pictures to get their message across,” he added.
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In 1914, the suffragette Mary Richardson slashed Diego Velasquez’s painting Venus with a Mirror in London’s National Gallery, opposing the arrest of her colleague Emmeline Pankhurst, as an example.
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An eco-movement spokesman says it’s “crazy” that people are more concerned about activists’ protests over the paintings than the fate of the millions of people affected by the floods in Pakistan. De Koning also confirmed that more protests will be held before Christmas, which “for the most part will represent road blocking” in Britain.
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Earlier, Just Stop Oil activists protested for several days in a row, climbing onto metal structures above the M25 road around London, which serve to fasten road signs. As a result, traffic on several sections of the highway was blocked. One day after the road was blocked, two trucks collided, as a result of which one police officer was injured. The police detained several dozen people for disturbing the peace, some were brought to trial.
