Young Australian Faces Charges for Allegedly Placing Googly Eyes on ‘Cast in Blue’ Artwork
A young person from Australia has faced legal proceedings after reportedly vandalizing a large blue sculpture of a legendary being by applying googly eyes to it.
Amelia Vanderhorst, aged 19, participated remotely at the local court in South Australia on that day, facing with a single charge of property damage.
In a statement at the time of the September incident, the local council said that surveillance video captured a person putting fake eyes on the artwork, which locals have nicknamed the “Blue Blob”.
The accused did not enter a plea and told the court she was unwell, as reported by news outlets, with the judge advising her to find a lawyer before her upcoming hearing in December.
The following day the reported event, the local mayor stated that repairs to the much-loved public artwork would be expensive as the adhesive eyes were impossible to be detached without harming the art piece.
“This wilful damage to a valued community art is unacceptable and disrespectful,” Mayor Lynette Martin remarked in September. “It is not harmless fun, it is pricey - it is also frustrating to those people of our community who have embraced the Blue Blob.”
She added the local government would pursue the “substantial” restoration expenses from those responsible for the damage.
When the artwork was first proposed, it drew mixed reactions from the area residents due to its price tag and design.
Costing 136,000 Australian dollars (eighty-nine thousand US dollars; sixty-eight thousand pounds), the artwork represents a mythical megafauna, with the sculpture’s designers inspired by an prehistoric marsupial ant-eater found in local caves that was “huge, slow-moving, and intriguing”.
