Glued to Gogh: Environmental activists glue themselves to famous paintings to protest oil consumption

Environmental activist group Just Stop Oil glued themselves to two landscape paintings in an art gallery in London and another in Glasgow on 29^th June 2022

At the Courthauld, two activists attached themselves to Vincent Van Gogh’s impressionist painting Peach Trees in Blossom (1889). In Glasgow, Carmen Lean and Hannah Torrance Bright glued themselves to the frame of Horatio McCulloch’s painting My Heart’s in the Highlands (1860).

So far, the Courtauld has revealed that the Van Gogh painting has not sustained damage, and the painting has been removed from exhibition only because the frame will need to undergo treatment to remove glue residue, as reported by artnews.com

One member of the environmental activist group, Louis McKechnie made a statement about the group’s activism, saying “it is immoral for cultural institutions to stand by and watch whilst our society descends into collapse. Galleries should close. Directors of art institutions should be calling on the government to stop all new oil and gas projects immediately. We are either in resistance or we are complicit.”

The McCulloch painting was chosen specially because it depicts 1860 “highland clearances, when whole crofting communities were evicted by a new class of landlords ruthlessly pursuing their own private interests”. The idea is that oil and gas companies are doing the same thing in the 21st century.

Activist Torrance Bright also criticised the UK government for not letting her “generation have a future”.

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