Water Whirler sculpture vandal pleads guilty
He wanted to be the first to climb Wellington’s Len Lye Water Whirler sculpture – but ended up in the drink, and hot water.
Hunter Laurie Browne Macdonald, 29, of Te Aro, pleaded guilty yesterday to intentionally damaging the sculpture on October 8.
He had been on the waterfront and climbed up on to the sculpture to do some gymnastic moves.
Police prosecutor Senior Constable Gary Hilsdon said Macdonald kept climbing higher up the pole until it bent and he was suspended above the water.
The sculpture snapped and he fell, injuring himself.
Macdonald told police he was hoping to climb to the end of the sculpture and back again while trying to impress the crowd and show off. He was keen to do it as he had not seen anyone do it before and wanted to be the first.
Macdonald said he did not know it was not to be climbed on and did not see any signs.
He believed it would hold his weight. His lawyer, Carrie Parkin, asked Wellington District Court judge Ian Mill to remand Macdonald until next year for sentencing and for a reparation report and restorative justice meeting to be considered.
The judge said he would not comment on what Macdonald said until his sentencing.
Macdonald is to be sentenced in
March.
The Water Whirler sculpture is worth $300,000.
Last month, Len Lye Foundation director Evan Webb said it wanted to produce three new wands because the cost to manufacture them one by one was so high.
It is likely to be fixed next year. Macdonald had said publicly he was ‘‘bored out of my mind’’ while walking along Wellington’s waterfront, when he came across the sculpture.
‘‘I decided to stop and sort of attempt some sort of gymnastic, acrobatic stuff on the sculpture.’’
Historian Roger Horrocks, who was Lye’s personal assistant in the final year of his life, said the artist would have been ‘‘deeply hurt by the sheer idiocy’’ of the person who saw it as just a climbing frame – and not a work of art.