Young Australian Charged for Supposedly Attaching Sticker Eyes on ‘Cast in Blue’ Artwork
A young person from the Land Down Under has faced legal proceedings after allegedly vandalizing a large blue sculpture of a legendary being by affixing plastic eyes to it.
Amelia Vanderhorst, 19 years old, participated remotely at the local court in the state of South Australia on that day, facing with a single charge of damaging property.
In a statement at the moment of the September incident, the local council said that surveillance video captured a individual putting fake eyes on the artwork, which residents have dubbed the “Blue Blob”.
Ms Vanderhorst made no plea and informed the judge she was unwell, as reported by news outlets, with the magistrate recommending her to secure a lawyer before her upcoming hearing in the final month of the year.
The following day the alleged incident, the local mayor said that repairs to the much-loved community sculpture would be expensive as the adhesive eyes were impossible to be removed without damaging the sculpture.
“This wilful damage to a cherished community art is unacceptable and disrespectful,” City of Mount Gambier mayor said in mid-September. “It is not innocent amusement, it is costly - it is also frustrating to those people of our community who have embraced Cast in Blue.”
She added the local government would seek the “substantial” repair costs from those responsible for the vandalism.
When the artwork was first proposed, it received varied responses from the local community due to its price tag and design.
Costing 136,000 Australian dollars ($89,000; sixty-eight thousand pounds), the artwork depicts a legendary giant animal, with the creators influenced by an prehistoric marsupial ant-eater discovered in nearby caverns that was “huge, slow-moving, and intriguing”.
