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THIS IS THE NIGER DELTA

Went subvertising for the first time in Nigeria yesterday evening, along with Friday Nbani of Lekeh Development Foundation and with the help of some local lads we got two billboards up on disused billboard spaces in Ogoniland We actually got caught by a government official halfway through, who turned up with a squad of tough guys on motorbikes, and it got quite heated, but after a discussion in which a sum of money was mentioned, he allowed his tough guys to assist us in finishing our work.

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NIGER DELTA

I’m currently in the Niger Delta and I have almost 2000 of these bumper stickers to give away for free out here. The 30th anniversary of the execution of the Ogoni Nine is on the 10th November and I’m currently working with local activists and filming a longer documentary about the almost incomprehensible destruction, murder and torture that Shell has brought to this region. I have kept a few stickers back in my shop to help pay for the free ones. I am also running a last-minute crowdfunder here to raise funds for anti-Shell billboard, placard, and t-shirt printing while I’m here. After my first visit to the Niger Delta in 2023, Ogoni climate activists asked me to create a Niger Delta Hell Bus to support their activities and provide a backdrop for their protests against the fossil fuel industry. I made the bus later that year and donated it to Ogoni environmental activists. It has been running ever since, although it is showing signs of wear-and tear. The next major protest is on the 10th November 2025, a peaceful march to the Shell HQ in Port Harcourt to commemorate the 30th anniversary of the execution of the Ogoni Nine. This march and vigil happens every year, mobilising tens of thousands of Ogoni people. ​I’ve come back to document the anniversary and film a new documentary about Shell’s crimes in the region and their attempts to avoid responsibility for almost 70 years of rampant destruction, oppression, and murder.

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HELL BUS BOOK – PREORDER!

I’m close to finishing work on a book that compiles everything I’ve done on the Hell Bus and adjacent anti-Shell projects into a single publication. My hope is that sales of this can help keep the Hell Bus on the road for the foreseeable future. I’ll post a few sample pages below. The book will be ready to ship in the first month of July. But if you preorder now you’ll get some extra free stickers with your copy! The Hell Bus Book Buy Now

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SHELL AGM

A new poster I made about Shell’s attitude towards the climate crisis has made its way onto hundreds of billboards, bus stops and tube carriages ahead of the Shell shareholders AGM next week. Massive thanks to Brandalism and all the tireless install teams who put these up! Will post more photos here soon.

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NIGER DELTA HELL BUS

Presenting the Niger Delta Hell Bus! A collaboration with Lekeh Development Foundation in support of Ogoni climate activists in the Niger Delta. I’m leaving Nigeria today so took a few photos for the road. There’s still things I want to add to the bus, a speaker system on the roof, ladders, and some sort of foldable stage would be great and it need a lot more sirens and lights (so it looks like a real Nigerian bus). Massive thanks to everyone who generously chipped into the crowdfunder to help make this version of the bus a reality, I’ve left the crowdfunder open until the end of the month to try and cover the bus’s running costs and also to fund a Hell t-shirt giveaway to activists out here since the shirts we printed for the march were so popular.

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HELL IN THE NIGER DELTA – DOCUMENTARY

I put together a short documentary about my visit to Nigeria for the first Niger Delta climate change conference organised by Lekeh Development Foundation (LEDEF). See my previous post about the trip here. One of the most polluted areas on the planet, the Niger Delta has a life expectancy of just 41 years due to decades of Shell oil spills & constant gas flaring. As part of the conference we visited two Shell oil spill sites in Eleme and K-Dere, Ogoniland, to see first hand some of the horrors that Shell has unleashed on this part of the world for over 65 years. The Eleme spill occurred in June 2023, K-Dere was in 2020, and is still untreated as of August 2023.

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SHELL IN NIGER DELTA

Yesterday I visited two Shell oil spill sites in the Niger Delta with Ogoni climate activists from Lekeh Development Foundation, local community leaders, and West African climate experts. It might be the saddest and most enraging thing I have ever seen. While there I filmed Ogoni community leaders, activists, students and doctors, explaining the situation and the suffering of these communities, and captured footage of the ecological devastation Shell and other oil companies have brought to their homes. See my story for one of these videos, the rest I need time to edit and upload.

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NEWSPAPER PAPER

I’m in the newspaper! Specifically I’m in The Posttraumatic from Spain, edited by the brilliant Octavi Serra who I met at Trashplant Festival last year. Copies or a subscription to the paper are available from The Posttraumatic website. Headline reads: “More of the same”

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HELL BIKE AT ‘THE BIG ONE’

The Hell Bike I designed for Fossil Free London got plenty of action last weekend at The Big One demos outside Parliament. It had a great reaction at the protest and I was really happy to see it in its stationary and marching modes. The banners are retractable depending on what the bike is being used for (and how windy it is). I wanted to make something that is as versatile as possible for all the different types of actions and protests it will be needed on, as it’s not just a straight-up art thing, it actually needs to be useful!As for the Hell Bus I hope to have some news about that in the coming weeks..

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A POSTCARD FROM HELL

I made this matte painting forced perspective photo opportunity in Los Llanos De Aridane in La Palma, Canary Islands so tourists could take a postcard photo of what the city could look like after a fossil fuel powered flood. I was invited as part of Trashplant Festival alongside some incredible street artists, including my old friend Isaac Cordal.

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OVERTAKEN BY REALITY: SATIRE INSIDE A DYSTOPIA

Between the Pope auctioning off his autographed Lamborghini for charity, Lockheed Martin bidding to run NHS GP surgeries, and the FBI’s social media tributes to Martin Luther King Jr, it’s easy to come to the conclusion that satire is dead. And maybe it is. As an artist who uses satire in my work I’ve been overtaken by reality more than once, and sometimes wondered if maybe I’m not making jokes, but accidentally producing comically malevolent ideas that could actually be used by the bastards who run the place.

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CARBON CAPTURE AT THE SCIENCE MUSEUM – BROUGHT TO YOU BY SHELL

Some impromptu new exhibits appeared today as part of the Shell-sponsored carbon capture exhibition at the Science Museum, London. ⁠ I thought it was weird that an exhibition about carbon capture, paid for by an oil company, didn’t once mention that 81% of all the carbon *ever* captured by this technology has been used by oil companies and pumped back into oil wells to help extract more oil. Seems like a significant omission (ok yes we can call it a ‘carbon omission’) Also thought it was weird that the exhibition didn’t mention that oil corporations are some of the biggest investors in carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology. No doubt because of how useful it is to them in getting more oil out of the ground, while being able to pass it off as a ‘green technology’ for tax breaks and marketing purposes. But now at least, for a time, the Science Museum exhibition does mention those things, as well featuring a great new idea about a super useful product to turn all that captured carbon into.

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HELL COMPLETE

I’ve just about recovered from the Hell Bus deadline and journey to and from Glasgow. It was an extremely stressful, frenetic and expensive project but it was also incredible fun and pretty exhilarating to be working on a large-scale exhibition again, (the biggest, and definitely the most complicated I’ve ever done) after the non-year of 2020. I absolutely love a deadline. There’s nothing like the fear of letting people down and making a prize tit of yourself to get you out of bed in the morning. The response to the exhibition was amazing, which I’m sure had nothing to do with the fact I was sitting at the end of the bus grinning and prodding at visitors as they left. The enthusiasm of the response encouraged me as to the viability of properly touring the bus in the new year. (If you run an event that could host the bus in spring/summer 2022 get in touch!)

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HELL BUS AT SHELL HQ

I brought the Hell Bus down to Shell HQ today with Joe Lycett. Parked it outside for almost an hour while the staff inside went into a self-imposed lockdown. The bus was being filmed for a new documentary Joe is making about Shell’s greenwashing PR, which will be out later this month. More details when I have them! The bus will be going to Glasgow for COP26 at the end of the month, and the exhibition inside is still under construction. I’m posting regular updates of my DIY nightmares over on my Instagram story.

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GLASTONBURY

Glastonbury was pretty damn great. Thanks to everyone who made it great. Including special thanks to my mushroom juice (see below) which was definitely a great idea.⁠⁠Also has to be said Block 9 stole the entire festival with the IICON giant head stage. Such genius.If anyone wants a print or a badge of my It Has To Get Worse poster, they’re in the shop

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EXTINCTION REBELLION AT THE HELL CENTRE

Shout out to everyone at the Extinction Rebellion protests today, in particular to the guy who super glued himself to the door at the Shell HQ with a copy of the anti-Shell logo I designed for my #burnthefuture project. It was also part of a banner they hung from the front of the building (see below). Very happy with that! If any activists ever need print quality files of my work for protests just get in touch.

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FRESH HELL

After Shell backed down from suing me and in solidarity with the #FrackFreeFour, I’m now selling this limited edition Hell t-shirt to raise money for anti-fracking campaign groups Reclaim The Power and Frack Off (UK). 100% of profits will be split between those two groups. Get yours here. #Shell

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CEASE AND DESIST

I’ve received a cease-and-desist letter from Shell demanding I remove these apocalypse-related products from my website within 7 days. This seems like pretty clear retaliation for the recent Shell greenwashing subvertising campaign my work was in, organised by Brandalism. I’m lucky enough to have free legal support from The Satanic Temple, London & UK so I’m going to see if I can fight it but I’m not optimistic. So I reckon you have a week to buy these up before they disappear from my website forever💀👍. All funds raised will go towards utterly pissing off Shell forever.

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#MAKETHEFUTURE #UNINHABITABLE

I designed some posters for this anti-fossil fuel greenwashing campaign in collaboration with Brandalism targeting Shell’s bullshit PR festival #makethefuture. Posters gone up in bus stops in London, Leeds, Bristol and Oxford. Images taken from my #burnthefuture installation at Shangri-La/Glastonbury last year. The other artists posters for this are brilliant too. 🛢🔥💀

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