Wrong Message

The irony of course, is that the artist’s action of removing an inch or the summit redefines nothing whatsoever, unless you genuinely think a notional change of mountain height has some real significance, but what he has, perhaps unwittingly done is highlighted the regard we have for our landscapes with an act of symbolic vandalism.

And that’s if you believe that he really did remove the topmost inch of Scafell Pike rather than just picking up a piece of random rock, as you might do, say, at Everest Base Camp.

That said, we’re distinctly unimpressed that a British gallery is promoting a brazen act of vandalism and that the summit of the mountain has been deliberately damaged, no matter how minor that damage might be.

Mountain Conservation

Not because we believe that the removal of a small chip of stone genuinely ‘redefines a nation’s landscape’ in any meaningful sense, but because it is completely at odds with the principles of mountain conservation.

If the artist and the gallery have any integrity or sense of decency, they should be making a big, fat donation to Fix The Fells to apologise for a frankly unacceptable act.