Young Australian Faces Charges for Allegedly Attaching Sticker Eyes on ‘Blue Blob’ Artwork
A young person from the Land Down Under has appeared in court after reportedly defacing a large art piece of a legendary being by affixing plastic eyes to it.
Amelia Vanderhorst, aged 19, participated remotely at Mount Gambier Magistrates Court in the state of South Australia on Tuesday, charged with a single charge of damaging property.
In a statement at the time of the recent event, the municipal authorities said that surveillance video captured a person putting artificial eyes on the sculpture, which residents have dubbed the “Blue Blob”.
Ms Vanderhorst made no plea and told the judge she was ill, according to media sources, with the magistrate advising her to secure a legal representative before her upcoming hearing in December.
The following day the alleged incident, the city leader stated that repairs to the popular public artwork would be expensive as the stickers were impossible to be detached without harming the art piece.
“This intentional vandalism to a cherished community art is unacceptable and disrespectful,” Mayor Lynette Martin said in mid-September. “It is not harmless fun, it is pricey - it is also frustrating to those people of our society who have embraced the Blue Blob.”
The mayor said the local government would pursue the “significant” repair costs from those accountable for the vandalism.
At the time the sculpture was initially suggested, it received mixed reactions from the local community due to its cost and design.
Priced at A$136,000 (eighty-nine thousand US dollars; sixty-eight thousand pounds), the artwork depicts a legendary giant animal, with the sculpture’s designers influenced by an prehistoric anteater-like marsupial discovered in nearby caverns that was “massive, lumbering and fascinating”.