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The new news that has set the screens and TV alight is this: ‘3 Just Stop Oil supporters have thrown soup over 2 of Van Gogh’s paintings in the National Gallery’s “Poets and Lovers” exhibition’. This is a new political act by the UK climate activist group using civil resistance to force the government to stop new licences for fossil fuel extraction.
Three Just Stop Oil supporters then wandered into the space where an exhibition of collected Van Gogh works is on display to throw Heinz soup on ‘Sunflowers 1889’ and ‘Sunflowers 1888’. The latter was the same work that Phoebe Plummer and Anna Holland went to in 2022.
Meanwhile, the popular 2022 case from the same collective has just been resolved. Activists Phoebe Plummer and Anna Holland have been jailed for their ‘art attack’ in which they threw tomato soup on Van Gogh’s painting ‘Sunflowers’ in protest at continuing climate injustice.
Plummer, 23, has been sentenced to two years in jail for causing damage to the painting’s frame worth an estimated £10,000, while her co-accused Holland, 22, has been sentenced to 20 months for the same offence. Holland will serve only half of her sentence on remand.
Plummer gave a speech to the judge in mitigation, citing examples of celebrities who had been criminalised while fighting for justice. They added that they would accept their sentence ‘with a smile’.