Commons indecency, perhaps – but was it art?

Introducing Rakewell, Apollo’s wandering eye on the art world. Look out for regular posts taking a rakish perspective on art and museum stories

Pandemonium in Parliament has of late become business as usual, but even so, events that took place in the House of Commons on Monday took naked disregard for procedure to a whole new level. As the house prepared for a series of indicative votes on Brexit, the chamber was invaded by a dozen semi-nude environmental activists, their bare chests providing space for slogans including ‘for all life’ and ‘SOS’.

The protestors were swiftly removed, but not before images of their protest had captured the attention of New York Magazine’s Jerry Saltz – who went so far as to advocate a re-enactment in his own country:

Come to the US Congress and do this, please! https://t.co/SuG6ineCR8

— Jerry Saltz (@jerrysaltz) April 1, 2019

Not everyone was quite so happy about the skin show, though. Ash Sarkar – a senior editor at Novara Media hitherto best known for calling Piers Morgan an idiot – took the protest as a prompt to summon her inner Brian Sewell:

I fucking hate performance art. It’s made an entire generation of people think that their nipples are of interest to the world at large. Save that shit for the person who’s currently ignoring your WhatsApp messages! https://t.co/ESJE8lmIvQ

— Ash Sarkar (@AyoCaesar) April 1, 2019

Marina Abramović: you have been warned. And as another Twitter user pointed out, the protestors weren’t the only live artworks in the public gallery…

How has one of the paintings come alive….. pic.twitter.com/otUsMnL5b8

— The land of Karda (@Firrooooo) April 2, 2019

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