A local council said the repairs to the bright blue sculpture would be 'significant'.

An Australian teenager has faced court for allegedly defacing a large blue sculpture of a mythical creature by sticking googly eyes on it.

Amelia Vanderhorst, 19, appeared via phone at Mount Gambier Magistrates Court in South Australia on Tuesday charged with one count of property damage.

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”.

  • MrWildBunnycat@lemmy.worldEnglish
    41·
    7 days ago

    Looking at the “damage” - it seems whoever removed them used a hard scraper and some sort of aggressive solvent. This is not damage from the googly eyes, but from the hands of the remover, who probably had too much caffeine and enthusiasm that day.

  • tal@lemmy.todayEnglish
    25·
    7 days ago

    I’m kind of sympathetic to the idea that there should be some sort of fine associated with petty vandalism, but I’ve also seen a number of comments here and elsewhere that it’s unlikely that whatever she did actually required causing this much damage to remove it, and that if it did, the sculpture was poorly designed in the first place. One user on Reddit asked whether, if the city had decided to use dynamite to remove the eyes, she should be liable for all the damage caused by the dynamite. I think that that’s probably a fair point to make. The blame doesn’t need to be entirely on any one party here.

    I could see fining her for whatever one might reasonably expect a competent removal to run from a properly-designed artwork, but not dumping costs on her from failures in those other areas.

    • SaraTonin@lemmy.worldEnglish
      321·
      7 days ago

      If i’d paid £68,000 for a statue to be installed outdoors and the coating on it was so thin that the glue on the back of a pair of googly eyes ruined the entire statue, I’d definitely be asking for my money back from the artist

  • rumba@lemmy.zipEnglish
    11·
    6 days ago

    1. It was an obvious improvment.

    2. There was an unfortunate choice in adhesive or removal technique.

    Involve her in the repair. look into wth it was so hard to remove them and make the knowledge public so future ‘pranks’ won’t be as bad.

  • redwattlebird @lemmings.worldEnglish
    15·
    6 days ago

    I’m torn.

    I love the googly eyes. Everything is better with googly eyes but I do know the pain of going through the council process to get stuff like this installed to make the area more interesting and engaging local artists.

    I suppose getting the teen’s family to cough up the repair money is fair. I hope they got lots of photos of it with the eyes before it was taken down.

  • jaykrown@lemmy.worldEnglish
    61·
    7 days ago

    A kid does something truly artistic and it gets called “defacing”. 🤡

  • Credibly_Human@lemmy.worldEnglish
    1110·
    6 days ago

    We treat art, especially old art, with far too much reverence.

    It’s largely just collection trophies for rich people or rich countries.

    Most of the historical data, if any, could be collected through scans and downloaded, but we insist on treating these with a weird reverence that makes no sense, often takes up space, and takes money to upkeep.

    I honestly don’t support this use of taxpayer funds.