The first official portrait of King Charles III got an unexpected makeover at around 12pm local time today, June 11, when two animal rights protesters accessed the painting at the Philip Mould Gallery in London and pasted a sticker depicting Wallace from the stop-motion animation series Wallace and Gromit over the monarch’s face.
The two protesters, Daniel Juniper and Ben Thomas, are part of the group Animal Rising, which aimed to call attention to its latest report alleging dire conditions for livestock and fish across several farms in the United Kingdom.
As the stickers were applied with a roller and a water-based adhesive, there was no harm done to the painting and no arrests were made. Hyperallergic has contacted artist Jonathan Yeo and Philip Mould Gallery for comment.
Accompanying the Wallace sticker was a speech bubble that read “No cheese, Gromit. Look at all this cruelty on RSCPA farms!,” referring to alleged cases of animal cruelty in 45 farms endorsed by the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (RSPCA) — an animal welfare charity operating in England and Wales. The report alleges “animal suffering on every farm” investigated over a four-month period, ranging from overcrowding, neglect, and mishandling to animals left for dead or decomposing onsite.
With King Charles III as a patron of the RSPCA, Juniper said in a statement that “even though we hope this is amusing to His Majesty, we also call on him to seriously reconsider if he wants to be associated with the awful suffering across farms being endorsed by the RSPCA.”
“Now is the perfect time for [Charles] to step up and call on the RSPCA to drop the Assured Scheme and tell the truth about animal farming,” Juniper continued.
