Greenpeace activists have installed a new artwork by artist Anish Kapoor on a Shell gas platform in the North Sea. The campaign group said that the piece, titled BUTCHERED, was unveiled as “devastating heatwaves, wildfires and floods” continue to affect communities worldwide.
Seven Greenpeace climbers boarded Shell’s Skiff platform—located 45 nautical miles off the Norfolk coast in the east of England—to secure the 12-by-8 meter canvas to the side of the rig. Using a high-pressure hose, the activists pumped 1,000 liters of red liquid onto the fabric. The blood-like solution—made from seawater, beetroot powder, and food-based dye—evokes the lives lost due to climate change. In a press release, the group wrote that it represents “our collective grief and pain at what has been lost, but also a cry for reparation.”
“The carbon dioxide released by burning fossil fuels is invisible, but we are witnessing the devastation that its extraction wreaks on our world,” Kapoor said of the artwork in a statement. “What still remains largely hidden is the responsibility oil giants like Shell bear for causing this destruction and profiting from worldwide suffering. I wanted to make something visual, physical, visceral to reflect the butchery they are inflicting on our planet: a visual scream that gives voice to the calamitous cost of the climate crisis, often on the most marginalised communities across the globe.”
The work was installed as the U.K. recorded its fourth heatwave of the summer. Parts of the country remain under health alerts, while drought conditions have destroyed farmland across the country. Similar destruction has been wreaked in China, northern India, Spain, and the United States.
“Extreme weather is hitting close to home, but the extraction of fossil fuels driving the climate crisis is often out of sight,” said Philip Evans, a senior campaigner at Greenpeace. “This 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.”
This is not the first time Kapoor has criticized the fossil fuel industry. In 2019 he joined 78 British artists, such as Sarah Lucas and Antony Gormley, in calling for London’s National Portrait Gallery to cut ties with BP. His work today carries the same message. “My work BUTCHERED 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,” he added.
