Theft dampens awards for artist

The Castaways Sculpture Awards week was dampened for one Rockingham artist when he discovered one of his works had been stolen.

Crisp Engineering Pty Ltd working director Alan Crisp, who created KB for this year’s exhibition, said he was “shocked” when he found his 2011 aluminium creation, Angry Planet, had been stolen from the front of his workshop.

Crisp believes the sculpture was taken from the Edison Circuit premises between Tuesday night and the early hours of Wednesday morning.

“I was here in the early morning but I didn’t notice anything because it was dark – when I came back from site at 1.30pm it was gone,” he said.

Crisp said the sculpture, which weighed about 40kg, was bolted to the front of the workshop above its logo and he assumed whoever stole it was not an “amateur”.

“I was very shocked, I couldn’t believe it, it is quite a long way up so someone has definitely put in a lot of effort into stealing it,” he said.

Crisp said the piece had extreme sentimental value.

“It was the first big sculpture I had ever done and it actually got a lot of attention so I was quite attached to it,” he said.

“I put a lot of time and effort into it.

“It took a couple of months of me working on it on the afternoon shift to put it together.”

Crisp said the art piece represented damage to the planet, with the belly of the design filled with rubbish, symbolising pollution at the 2011 Castaways exhibition.

He said he could not convince his wife to place Angry Planet in the front yard of their home, so he decided to make it a feature for the front of his engineering business.

“I thought it would look good on the wall and it suited it well,” he said.

Crisp said he had no idea why someone would take the sculpture but hoped whoever did would return it. “No hard feelings, just bring it back,” he said.

Police investigations are ongoing.

Anyone with information is asked to phone Crime Stoppers on 1800 333 000.