A woman has been charged with criminal damage over an attack on one of Australia's most famous paintings as a protest against a gas company's alleged destruction of rock art in Western Australia's north.
Video released by activist group Disrupt Burrup Hub on Thursday showed a woman spray-painting a Woodside Energy logo onto Fredrick McCubbin's work Down On His Luck at the Art Gallery of WA.
She then appears to glue her hand to the wall beside the colonial masterpiece as a man lays an Aboriginal flag on the floor of the gallery.
"This painting is barely 100 years old," the man says, pointing to McCubbin's 1889 oil on canvas work.
"We have 50,000-year-old artwork that Woodside is destroying. Cultural artwork that is sacred to our people is being destroyed."
The gallery said the McCubbin was protected by a clear plastic sheet and not damaged by the yellow paint.
Police said on Friday a 37-year-old Northbridge woman had been charged with one count of criminal damage and was due to appear in Perth Magistrates Court on February 16.
Disrupt Burrup Hub has called for industrial development on the rock art-rich Burrup Peninsula, about 30km west of Karratha in the Pilbara region, to be stopped, including Woodside Energy's expansion of the Pluto gas plant.
The Burrup Peninsula, known as Murujuga to traditional owners, contains the largest and oldest collection of petroglyphs in the world.
It is also home to the Murujuga National Park, the town of Dampier, Dampier Salt, a Rio Tinto Iron Ore export facility and a fertiliser plant.
Woodside has operated the Karratha Gas Plant on the Burrup for more than 30 years and has the majority share in the nearby Pluto Gas Plant.
Both projects required a significant amount of rock art to be relocated on the peninsula.
The company plans to expand the Pluto plant to process natural gas from the Scarborough offshore gas field.
A spokeswoman said Woodside respected people's rights to protest peacefully and lawfully.
"Woodside has a proven, more than 35-year, track record of safe, reliable and sustainable operations on Murujuga, delivering natural gas to customers in WA and around the world," she said.
"Our environmental approach complies with all applicable environmental laws and regulations and is underpinned by robust science-based decisions."
The company said peer-reviewed research had not identified any impacts on Murujuga rock art from industrial emissions associated with liquefied natural gas production.
