An artist who defaced Frederick McCubbin’s Down On His Luck during a protest against Woodside Energy will fight a charge over access to her electronic device.

April 24, 2023

An artist who defaced one of Australia’s most famous paintings during a gas company protest will fight a counter-terrorism charge over access to her electronic devices, labelling it “state-sanctioned overreach”.

Joana Veronika Partyka, 37, pleaded not guilty on Monday in the Perth Magistrates Court to one count of failing to obey a data access order after she declined to cooperate with authorities.

Her lawyer, Zarah Burgess, said Partyka would mount a reasonable excuse defence during the one-day trial scheduled for September 11 in the same court.

The Australian Greens communication advisor’s home was raided in late February by counter-terrorism police, who seized her mobile phone, laptop and other belongings.

Partyka was ordered to provide access to the electronic devices by early March, which she declined to do.

“We have always maintained that Ms Partyka had a reasonable excuse to not give police full access to her devices,” Ms Burgess said.

“Particularly as they contain sensitive organisational information relating to the political party for which Ms Partyka works, as well as personal data of that party’s members, donors and supporters.”

The raid came about a month after Partyka pleaded guilty to criminally damaging Frederick McCubbin’s work Down On His Luck at the Art Gallery of Western Australia.

During the protest Partyka spray-painted a Woodside Energy logo onto a clear plastic sheet protecting the oil on canvas work painted in 1889.

She was fined $2637 and ordered to pay the art gallery $4821.08 in compensation.

Partyka on Monday said the raid and data access order that followed was anti-democratic and a gross infringement of her human rights.

“Given the matter resulting from my protest action at the Art Gallery of WA has been dealt with in the judicial system, it is clear that these heavy-handed bullying tactics have the sole intention of intimating me and other climate activists,” she said.

“Acts of dissent are central to a strong civil society, to our democracy, and to the political process.”

Partyka said she would not be intimidated by the “unjustified, state-sanctioned overreach, and (would) continue to defend both our climate and my democratic rights.”

Disrupt Burrup Hub has called for industrial development on the Burrup Peninsula – about 30 kilometres 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.