Much-loved Sheffield street art targeted in vandal attack

Rocket01's defaced David Attenborough portrait on Charles Street. A message accusing someone of the vandalism has been blurred out in the right corner

The popular portrait of David Attenborough on Charles Street by Rocket01 has had the words ‘Womens Liberation’ [sic] scrawled across it.

Around the corner from Attenborough, another of Rocket’s portraits has been completely ruined.

Rocket01's Patrick Moore portrait suffered 'irreversible' damage

The mural of the late astronomer Sir Patrick Moore, on Froggatt Lane, has been sprayed with gold paint.

Rocket- whose real name is Chris Butcher- said the damage to the Moore piece is ‘irreversible’.

He hopes he will be able to cover up the damage to the Attenborough portrait, as well as to another of his murals that was defaced in the Antiques Quarter last week.

The bad news continued when Rocket’s wife discovered she had also fallen victim to vandalism.

The vandalism Faunagraphic had to clear up. Credit: Laura Kishimoto

Sarah Yates- better known as her artist name, Faunagraphic- had been working on a new mural behind the Red Lion pub on Charles Street for a street art event in the city this week.

This morning she discovered two spray-painted signs on her work that look like the head, torso and arms of a stick man - or the universal symbol for a female.

These are similar to the signs that appeared on both of the Moore and Attenborough portraits.

As the street art scene in Sheffield is ‘quite a small community’, Rocket believes he knows who is behind the ‘tagging’ - another word for defacing art.

Faunagraphic re-doing the vandalised section of her new mural

“One guy in particular decided to start destroying stuff,” he said.

“Some people like to create art. Others like to vandalise stuff. It’s upset us quite a lot,” he added.

Faunagraphic has been able to patch up her new piece and said she is not too worried about her work because it looked to her as if the vandal ‘was holding back’.

She explained that only a small section of her mural has been sprayed on an unfinished part of the wall that was easy to re-do.

She said: “My husband’s ones are the ones to worry about.”

Although Rocket believes he knows who is behind the vandalism, he will not do anything about it.

He said: “What can we do? We are a family, we have two children. We haven’t got time to be running after people.”