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”.

  • rumba@lemmy.zipEnglish
    11·
    2 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.

  • Annoyed_🦀 @lemmy.zipEnglish
    1582·
    3 days ago

    And that’s why, kids, you should never cheap out and skip primer. This piece won’t last two years of Australian weather before it start chipping, and this kid proof it.

    • Kn1ghtDigital@lemmy.zipEnglish
      4815·
      3 days ago

      This story was cute until I saw this, if removing the eyes didn’t damage the art it would be harmless but that’s really unfortunate…

      • MentalEdge@sopuli.xyzEnglish
        882·
        3 days ago

        This is on whoever removed the eyes.

        There are like two dozen ways to completely dissolve most adhesives.

        Or what, did she epoxy them on there?

        • rumba@lemmy.zipEnglish
          3·
          2 days ago

          Unless the blobs are some gel solvent they used for removal before prying them off with a shovel, i’d say it’s some form of contact cement.

          A little patience and some isopropyl, maybe a heat gun would have likely let them remove it without harm. Whoever did the removal wasn’t trying to be careful, they gauged it as someone else’s problem.

    • atzanteol@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      282·
      3 days ago

      I wonder what pigeon shit is going to do to it? Seems too fragile to clean with pressure washers.

    • rumba@lemmy.zipEnglish
      1·
      2 days ago

      Based on the blobs underneath the right eye, I’m wondering if they used contact adhesive.

      It’s likely the proper solvent would have let them come off with minimal damage.

  • redwattlebird @lemmings.worldEnglish
    15·
    3 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.

  • MrWildBunnycat@lemmy.worldEnglish
    40·
    3 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
    23·
    3 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
      311·
      3 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

  • troed@fedia.io
    57·
    3 days ago

    The local council said they could not remove the eyes without damaging the artwork

    (emph. mine)

    Ok, but why is their incompetence an argumen?

    • DaiDactylos@feddit.ukEnglish
      3·
      3 days ago

      Looks like the unholy outcome of breeding a Smurf with a Womble…

      Which is to say that it looks much better with the eyes in place.