Greenpeace climb Shell gas platform spraying red ‘artwork’

Greenpeace climbers scaled the North Sea platform 45 miles off the Norfolk coast yesterday and fastened a giant 12m x 8m canvas to one side of the structure.

The activists then hoisted up a high-pressure hose which pumped out 1,000 litres of a red liquid onto the canvas and into the sea below.

The group are calling it the world’s first artwork to be installed an active offshore gas site.

The climate stunt at Shell’s Skiff gas platform 45 miles off the coast of Norfolk 

Designed by artist Anish Kapoor, the ‘artwork’ is titled ‘Butchered’ and was in response to heatwaves, wildfires and floods in the UK and globally, which Greenpeace say the oil and gas and wider fossil fuel industry is responsible for causing.

The blood-like liquid sprayed on the canvas attached to Shell’s Skiff gas platform was a mix of seawater, beetroot powder and non-toxic, food-based pond dye.

The activists sprayed 1,000 litres of the blood-red liquid onto the canvas (Image: Greenpeace) Greenpeace says the ‘artwork’ is a “stark visualisation of the wound inflicted on both humanity and the earth by the fossil fuel industry”.

Anish Kapoor, the artist behind the stunt, said he wanted to create something to reflect the “butchery” that Shell and the fossil fuel industry is “inflicting on our planet”.

The liquid flowing into the sea below (Image: Greenpeace) “Butchered is an action that happens at the place where this violation starts – a gas platform in the middle of the sea,” he said.  

“Butchered attempts to bring home the horror, giving voice to the moral and physical destruction caused by ruthless profiteers.

“My work is also a tribute to the heroic work done in opposition to this destruction, and to the tireless activists who choose to disrupt, disagree and disobey.”

Anish Kapoor, the artist behind the stunt (Image: Greenpeace) Philip Evans, senior campaigner at Greenpeace UK, said the artwork is 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”.

“While the fossil fuel sector makes billions from climate destruction, ordinary people are left to pick up the rising costs of flood damage, droughts and wildfires,” he said.

“Governments need to start holding oil giants like Shell to account and make them pay for the enormous damage they are causing.”