Young Australian Faces Charges for Allegedly Placing Googly Eyes on ‘Blue Blob’ Sculpture

A young person from the Land Down Under has appeared in court after allegedly defacing a sizable art piece of a mythical creature by applying plastic eyes to it.

Amelia Vanderhorst, 19 years old, participated via phone at the local court in South Australia on Tuesday, charged with one count of damaging property.

In a statement at the moment of the September incident, the local council said that CCTV footage showed a person putting fake eyes on the artwork, which locals have dubbed the “Cast in Blue”.

The accused did not enter a plea and informed the court she was ill, as reported by media sources, with the magistrate advising her to secure a legal representative before her upcoming hearing in December.

A day after the alleged incident, the local mayor stated that repairs to the popular community sculpture would be expensive as the adhesive eyes could not be removed without harming the art piece.

“This wilful damage to a valued community art is inappropriate and disrespectful,” City of Mount Gambier mayor remarked in September. “It is not innocent amusement, it is costly - it is also disappointing to those members of our society who have embraced the Blue Blob.”

The mayor added the local government would pursue the “substantial” repair costs from those responsible for the vandalism.

At the time the sculpture was first proposed, it received varied responses from the local community due to its cost and design.

Costing 136,000 Australian dollars ($89,000; sixty-eight thousand pounds), the artwork depicts a legendary giant animal, with the creators inspired by an prehistoric marsupial ant-eater discovered in nearby caverns that was “huge, slow-moving, and intriguing”.