Stonehenge is the newest cultural landmark to be focused by Simply Cease Oil environmental activists, who right now sprayed the traditional website in Wiltshire, UK, with orange powder paint.
A spokesperson for English Heritage, which oversees the monument, tells The Artwork Newspaper: “Orange powdered paint has been thrown at a lot of the stones at Stonehenge. Clearly, that is extraordinarily upsetting and our curators are investigating the extent of the harm. Stonehenge stays open to the general public.”
In an announcement, Wiltshire police mentioned: “Now we have arrested two individuals following an incident at Stonehenge this afternoon. At round midday, we responded to a report that orange paint had been sprayed on a number of the stones by two suspects. Officers attended the scene and arrested two individuals on suspicion of damaging the traditional monument. Our inquiries are ongoing.” Based on the Guardian, members of the general public tried to cease the incident.
Simply Cease Oil named each activists in an announcement (Niamh Lynch, 21, and Rajan Naidu, 73). Naidu says: “The orange cornflour we used to create an attention grabbing spectacle will quickly wash away with the rain, however the pressing want for efficient authorities motion to mitigate the catastrophic penalties of the local weather and ecological disaster is not going to.”
Simply Cease Oil provides that it’s “demanding that the incoming UK authorities decide to working with different governments to agree an equitable plan to finish the extraction and burning of oil, fuel and coal by 2030”. The UK prime minister Rishi Sunak condemned the incident nonetheless, telling The Guardian: “It is a disgraceful act of vandalism to one of many UK’s and the world’s oldest and most essential monuments.”
Beforehand, Simply Cease Oil protests have focused the Magna Carta on the British Library in London and artworks together with Vincent van Gogh’s Sunflowers(1888) on the capital’s Nationwide Gallery.
UPDATE (20 June): The orange powder paint sprayed onto a part of Stonehenge has since been eliminated. The English Heritage chief govt, Nick Merriman, advised BBC Radio 4 that there seemed to be “no seen harm” to the 5,000-year-old landmark after consultants cleaned the positioning which will likely be open for Summer season Solstice celebrations from 19:00 on 20 June.