Just Stop Oil Sunflowers protest

Just Stop Oil Sunflowers protest
Court	Southwark Crown Court
Decided	27 September 2024
Court membership
Judge sitting	Christopher Hehir

On 14 October 2022, Phoebe Plummer and Anna Holland threw two tins of Heinz Cream of Tomato Soup at a Sunflowers painting by Vincent van Gogh at the National Gallery in London, glued themselves to the wall, and demanded to know whether art was worth more than life, food, and justice. They had been inspired to do so by the decrease in media coverage of the organisation's activism and selected that painting due to its vulnerability. Their act earned the pair worldwide censure and queerphobic abuse and caused £10,000 worth of damage to the picture's frame but inspired several subsequent activists to throw other foodstuffs at other paintings. The pair were convicted of criminal damage in July 2024 by Christopher Hehir, who sentenced Plummer to 24 months in prison and Holland to 20 months in September 2024 to criticism from George Monbiot and Nadya Tolokonnikova.

Background and preparation

Just Stop Oil was founded in February 2022 by Roger Hallam and demand that the government of the United Kingdom stops issuing new licenses for the exploration, development and production of fossil fuels. Their members included Anna Holland and Phoebe Plummer, who joined in May and August and use singular they pronouns. The organisation's activists mounted a series of protests including protesters turning up at the National Gallery in July 2022 and gluing themselves to John Constable's The Hay Wain. The National Gallery held one of seven paintings of Sunflowers by Vincent Van Gogh housed in a 17th century frame with silver leaf, clay undercoat and patina built up over centuries, which had been chosen in 1999 for its rustic style and because its colouration matched the painting.

In the wake of declining media coverage, Holland and some others began developing ways to return to the headlines. They considered spraypainting the statue of Winston Churchill in Parliament Square orange, but considered Churchill too divorced from the climate crisis and his monument too heavily guarded, and considered attacking Andy Warhol's Campbell's Soup Cans, but instead selected Sunflowers due to its vulnerability. The pair opted to throw soup instead of paint as it symbolised the tinned goods distributed by food banks, whose usage had risen following the global energy crisis. Plummer and Holland arrived at the National Gallery on 13 October 2022. The pair came with soup in their backpacks with the intention of testing the gallery's security protocols and used their visit to examine the positions of guards. They also inspected the painting and made sure there was glass protecting it. They then spent the night at a Just Stop Oil safe house, where they practiced various positions and arrived at the conclusion that the soup was best thrown over arm, with a short backlift. They also memorised speeches they intended to deliver after throwing them.

Protest and aftermath

"What is worth more, art or life? Is it worth more than food? Worth more than justice? Are you more concerned about the protection of a painting, or the protection of our planet and people? The cost-of-living crisis is part of the cost-of-oil crisis, fuel is unaffordable to millions of cold, hungry families. They can’t even afford to heat a tin of soup."

Plummer on 14 October 2022

The pair entered the gallery at around 11am the next day and entered room 43 armed with two cans of Heinz Cream of tomato soup, superglue, and a loaf of bread. After waiting for more than ten minutes for a group of schoolchildren to move out of the way, the pair removed their jackets to reveal white shirts with Just Stop Oil slogans, threw their soup at the painting, glued themselves to the wall, and demanded to know whether art was worth more than life, food, and justice. Nerves meant that Plummer went off-script and was still talking about dying mangroves by the time the guards had cleared the gallery, meaning Holland did not get to deliver their speech. The acid in the soup eroded some of the patina and left permanent pale streaks, causing £10,000 worth of damage. A supporter filmed the act for publicity purposes.

The protest caused worldwide outrage, though some were assuaged by the fact that the painting was behind glass and was itself unharmed. The pair received significant queerphobic abuse from social media and right-wing newspapers following the incident, though their actions inspired several subsequent climate activists to throw food at paintings around the world, including mashed potato in Germany at a Claude Monet painting and maple syrup in Canada at an Emily Carr painting. Plummer became one of the organisation's most recognised faces, though Holland stepped back from frontline activism after seeing the effect their protests had had on their family.

The pair were arrested and charged with criminal damage and aggravated trespass and pled not guilty at Westminster Crown Court on the grounds that they had caused no damage to the painting. They were released on bail on the condition that they did not enter galleries or museums and or possess paint or adhesive substances in a public place, following which they took the tube to a safe house still wearing their prison uniforms. Surreptitious photos of them laughing during the journey were sent to a tabloid, sparking further disgusted headlines. In an interview with Damian Whitworth of The Times published in July 2024, Plummer stated that they had felt "empowered" by the soup throwing incident, as they felt they was "seizing back power from the systems that are hell-bent on destroying us and destroying everything we know and love".

Trial and reactions

Plummer and Holland faced a jury trial for their actions in July 2024 at Southwark Crown Court, at which Plummer represented themself and Raj Chada represented Holland. They faced Judge Christopher Hehir, who earlier that month had sentenced Hallam and four other Just Stop Oil activists to four and five year jail terms for organising a rolling four-day blockade of the M25 motorway. Hehir dismissed several of Chada's defenses and forbade the pair from discussing climate change or trying to justify their actions, allowing them only to argue that they were not knowingly reckless at the time. He also repeatedly reminded the jury to disregard the defendants' reasoning and ordered them not to return a perverse verdict. They took just over two hours to return a guilty verdict, prompting Hehir to warn the pair to expect jail time.

In September 2024, more than a hundred artists, curators and academics signed an open letter coordinated by Greenpeace and Liberate Tate imploring Hehir not to sentence Plummer and Holland to prison. On 27 September 2024, the day of sentencing, several hundred supporters of Plummer and Holland held a vigil outside. In spite of both of these, Hehir sentenced Plummer to two years for their tomato soup protest and 20 months, using his closing statement to state that he was punishing Plummer and Holland for the damage they could have done to the painting. Around an hour after sentencing, further activists performed an identical protest at the National Gallery.

In response to the sentence, activists from Last Generation threw soup at the Embassy of the United Kingdom, Berlin and similar protests took place outside the embassies of Amsterdam, Paris, and Rome. Writing in The Guardian, George Monbiot criticised Plummer and Holland's sentences and pointed out that Hehir had given suspended sentences to violent criminals, rapists, and paedophiles and that Huw Edwards and racist protesters in the 2024 United Kingdom riots had also been given suspended sentences. Nadya Tolokonnikova opined in the same paper that Van Gogh would have approved of the protest as nature was his muse and that "breaking and destroying" was "a valid and striking artistic and political statement". Celia Walden, however, was less sympathetic and took the view that words were enough.