David Bowie statue vandalised less than 48 hours after being unveiled
The world’s first David Bowie statue has been vandalised.
Officially unveiled to the world on Sunday (25th March), the fan-funded statue - entitled Earthly Messenger - is located in Aylesbury’s Market Square; the same town where David Bowie first performed as his iconic Ziggy Stardust persona in 1972.
Aylesbury locals woke up this morning to discover that, less that two days after its unveiling, the statue has already been vandalised.
The pavement around the statue has the words ‘Feed the homeless first’ graffitied on it while either side of the sculpture is graffiti reading ‘RIP DB’ (RIP David Bowie).
> Less than 48 hours guys. The David Bowie statue in Aylesbury has been vandalised. pic.twitter.com/pxqrGTrCi7 > > — Justin Dealey (@JustinDealey) March 27, 2018
The statue itself has been sprayed with black paint and, additionally, a part of the sculpture that features David Bowie’s album covers ‘Blackstar’, ‘Aladdin Sane’, ‘Low’, ‘Hunky Dory’ and ‘The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars’ has been crudely vandalised.
Deputy Mayor Mark Willis, who was at the unveiling on Sunday, told Metro: “I want to point out that this statue received precisely £0 of public money.
“That’s right, £0. It was entirely funded through crowdfunding, by members of the public, myself included.
“One of the charities I support monthly is Shelter as homelessness and poverty are absolute scourges on society that need solving.”
> Someone’s already vandalised David Bowie statue with ‘feed the homeless’ https://t.co/gkFypJTriS pic.twitter.com/UCw3AjjBdW > > — forever_records (@djled_abuja) March 27, 2018
The funds to create the sculpture were raised via a £100,000 crowdfunding appeal by music promoter and Bowie aficionado David Stopps.
Stopps told the BBC: "We can get that paint off, we will be working on it today. It is a public piece of art and we will keep looking after it on a daily basis.
"There is a webcam on it 24/7 so whoever did it, we have got them on webcam."
According to The Bucks Herald, the vandalism happened between 5.45pm on Monday and 7.30am this morning.
The visually striking statue was designed and sculpted by Andrew Sinclair and features speakers mounted above the life-size piece playing a Bowie song every hour between 9am and 9pm.
With Ziggy Stardust jumping out at the fore, incarnations of Bowie featured include the Pierrot costume from the ‘Ashes To Ashes’ video, Jareth the Goblin King from the movie Labyrinth and, more recently, Bowie with a bandage and buttons sewn over his eyes from the ‘Lazarus’ video.
The statue before it was vandalised:
> The world’s first #davidbowie statue in #Aylesbury ? > > A post shared by Danny Fullbrook (@danny_fullbrook) on Mar 25, 2018 at 8:50am PDT