World-Famous Artist Helps Greenpeace ‘Butcher’ a Shell Offshore Gas Rig

By Dave Levitan  |  August 14, 2025 | 8:45am
Photo by Andrew McConnell / Greenpeace
Climate Protest
World-Famous Artist Helps Greenpeace ‘Butcher’ a Shell Offshore Gas Rig

Visually striking climate protests, especially those involving artworks, tend to spur tiring, tedious news cycles about their supposedly counterproductive nature. Actual studies have found the opposite, that they in fact engender a “measurable increase in public attention” and that “climate action became relatively more salient,” but that doesn’t quiet the critics. In general, the complaints seem to consider public climate protest the acts of unruly children, rather than activists with relevant viewpoints. Okay: what if a world-famous artist with a knighthood got involved?

“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,” said Sir Anish Kapoor, the British sculptor you probably know best from Chicago’s Cloud Gate — The Bean. Kapoor, 71, joined Greenpeace in creating the artwork seen above, which he called “BUTCHERED.”

On Wednesday, a group of Greenpeace activists scaled Shell’s gas rig Skiff, which is located a few dozen miles off the UK coast in the North Sea. They draped an enormous canvas over its side, and used a high-pressure hose to spray a combination of seawater, beetroot powder and non-toxic, food-based pond dye across it. Greenpeace claims it is the first time a piece of fine art has been installed on an active oil and gas platform.

There is a difference, of course, between even the symbolic “destruction” of existing fine art and the creation of a new work forced onto a fossil fuel canvas. But maybe the participation of an elder statesman, instead of the supposed petulant children everyone gets so worked up about, will be more palatable? Kapoor received a knighthood in 2013, among a variety of other honors over the years.

“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,” Kapoor said.

Shell and Greenpeace have a history. Late last year, the two agreed on a settlement over a multi-million-dollar lawsuit regarding activists’ boarding and occupation of Shell ships and oil rigs. At the time, Greenpeace promised to keep going after the fossil fuel giant.

Shell is among the many oil majors that have backtracked on hollow climate promises; in 2024 it weakened a 2030 emissions target, and abandoned a 2035 version entirely. The company made $4.3 billion in the second quarter this year.

 
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