An Australian teenager has faced court for allegedly defacing a large blue sculpture of a mythical creature by sticking googly eyes on it.<\/p>\n
Amelia Vanderhorst, 19, appeared via phone at Mount Gambier Magistrates Court in South Australia on Tuesday charged with one count of property damage. <\/p>\n
In a statement at the time of the September incident, the local council said CCTV footage showed a person putting artificial eyes on the artwork which locals have nicknamed the “Blue Blob”.<\/p>\n
Ms Vanderhorst did not enter a plea and told the court she was ill, according to the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC), with the magistrate advising her to find a lawyer before her next court date in December.<\/p>\n
A day after the alleged incident, the local mayor said repairs to the much-loved public artwork would be costly as the stickers could not be removed without damaging the sculpture.<\/p>\n
“This wilful damage to a valued public artwork is inappropriate and disrespectful,” City of Mount Gambier mayor Lynette Martin said in mid-September. <\/p>\n
“It is not harmless fun, it is costly – it is also frustrating to those members of our community who have embraced Cast in Blue.”<\/p>\n
She said the council would pursue the “significant” repair costs from those responsible for the damage.<\/p>\n
When the sculpture was first proposed, it drew mixed reactions from the local community due to its price tag and design.<\/p>\n
Costing A$136,000 ($89,000; \u00a368,000), the artwork represents a mythical megafauna, with the sculpture’s designers inspired by an ancient marsupial ant-eater found in local caves that was “massive, lumbering and fascinating”.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"An Australian teenager has faced court for allegedly defacing a large blue sculpture of a mythical creature by…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":266788,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[43,44,41,39,42,40],"class_list":{"0":"post-266787","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-headlines","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-top-news","11":"tag-top-stories","12":"tag-topnews","13":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/266787","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=266787"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/266787\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/266788"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=266787"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=266787"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=266787"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}