The first statue honouring the late artist has been vandalised, less than 48 hours after it was unveiled on 25 March in Aylesbury.
Black graffiti has been sprayed painted, saying ‘Feed the homeless first’ and ‘RIP DB’.
Deputy Mayor Mark Willis said, ‘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.”
David Stopps, the local promoter behind the statue, told Mix96, “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.”
“The paint was on the statue, the wall behind and on the pavement. It was about the homeless – but I do quite a lot for the homeless, which is the irony of the whole thing.”
Named Earthly Messenger, the statue was created by artist Andrew Sinclair and funded by a Kickstarter campaign organised by Stopps. Aylesbury is the town where Ziggy Stardust was first debuted in 1972.