{"id":398165,"date":"2026-04-14T15:56:09","date_gmt":"2026-04-14T15:56:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/398165\/"},"modified":"2026-04-14T15:56:09","modified_gmt":"2026-04-14T15:56:09","slug":"quirky-sculpture-stolen-from-garden","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/398165\/","title":{"rendered":"quirky sculpture stolen from garden"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Police in the UK are on the trail of a Superlambanana after it was stolen from a garden.<\/p>\n<p>The sculpture, a hybrid of a sheep and a banana which has become a symbol of Liverpool, was taken from the front garden of a home in Runcorn, a spokeswoman for Cheshire Constabulary said.<\/p>\n<p>Thieves made off with the 76cm ornament, which is about 120cm long and painted with brightly coloured stripes and decorations, at about 11pm on 29 March, according to police.<\/p>\n<p>The spokeswoman said: &#8220;The ornament has sentimental value to the family and they are keen for its return.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>The Superlambanana was designed in 1998 by Japanese artist Taro Chiezo as part of the Artranspennine festival.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"a sculpture of a lamb crossed with a banana and brightly coloured\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/002437d0-614.jpg\"\/><\/p>\n<p>The design is said to have been a comment on the potential dangers of genetic engineering, as well as representing some of the cargo which came through the city&#8217;s port.<\/p>\n<p>When Liverpool was made European Capital of Culture 2008 more than 100 of the sculptures were decorated by artists, groups and individuals and were displayed as part of a Go Superlambananas trail across the city.<\/p>\n<p>Seventy of them were later auctioned off, with some of the items selling for more than #20,000.<\/p>\n<p>A number of Superlambananas can still be seen across the city, including a 5.18m sculpture on Tithebarn Street which was painted in the colours of the Ukraine flag when the Eurovision Song Contest was held in 2023.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Police in the UK are on the trail of a Superlambanana after it was stolen from a garden.&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":398166,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[307,304,305,306,308,93,61,60],"class_list":["post-398165","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-arts-and-design","tag-arts","tag-arts-and-design","tag-artsanddesign","tag-artsdesign","tag-design","tag-entertainment","tag-ie","tag-ireland"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/398165","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=398165"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/398165\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/398166"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=398165"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=398165"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=398165"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}