At noon last Sunday, March 3, visitors of the Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum witnessed a pair of activists from the group This is Rigged pour a pot full of porridge and jam down a bust of Queen Victoria amid recent protests, according to Art News.
Demonstrations at Kelvingrove Art Gallery & Museum and George Square
The activist group themselves claimed responsibility for the two demonstrations, both of which were held at the Glasgow institution and the nearby George Square.
The protest at the museum, in particular, also saw one of the vandals spraying the word "cunt" in pink paint on the front of the plinth where the marble sculpture, which was made by Francis John Williamson in 1888, stood.
In the video posted by This is Rigged on X (formerly Twitter), the activist duo can be heard saying: "We refuse to be dragged back to the Victorian era. Diseases of starvation including scurvy and rickets are on the rise."
A day after, on March 4, the demonstration at the square was held, where bronze statues in the likeness of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert riding horses were similarly sprayed with food, this time the protesters used fire extinguisher-propelled soup.
The statues were made by Italian-French sculptor Carlo Marochetti, whose public monuments are scattered and well-known across Britain.
Of the two demonstrations, This is Rigged told the art publication that their goal was to raise awareness of the skyrocketing cost of food and this issue's connection to climate change, following the media's failure to cover the aforementioned problems.
The activist group is asking for local supermarkets to bring down the price of baby food and for the Scottish government to financially support community food hubs as an action against the mounting severity of malnutrition and cases of rickets in the region.
In an Instagram post, This is Rigged confirmed the identity of the activist pair as 30-year-old Sorcha Ní Mháirtín and 23-year-old Hannah Taylor.
After the stunt, both Mháirtín and Taylor were arrested by local authorities and charged with the crime of breaching the peace.
Glasgow Life, the charity in charge of Glasgow's museums, has reached out to the art publication to say that the Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum bust of Queen Victoria has since been cleansed and the graffiti plastered on the plinth removed.
