Police are investigating after a £600 wicker statue built to mark the Ryder Cup was apparently damaged by vandals.
A spokeswoman for the service said the woven golfer at Aberuthven was knocked over some time between 7pm on Saturday and 9am on Sunday.
The council-owned artwork had been placed at Viewfields, on Old School Lane. It is one of 18 such sculptures dotted across the region to mark the golfing competition taking place at Gleneagles in September.
Yesterday, a council spokeswoman said the incident was “disheartening”.
“We are extremely disappointed that this sculpture has been vandalised,” she said.
“A lot of time and effort was put into making these sculptures, which have been installed throughout villages across Perth and Kinross to celebrate the Ryder Cup in September and to encourage visitors to explore the wider area.
“Aberuthven residents requested a sculpture be installed in their village and I’m sure they are as disheartened by this insensitive act as we are. We will assess the damage to see if it can be repaired.”
However, the artist behind the piece, June McEwan, said while the damage was “annoying”, as it would need to be repaired, she did not believe it was necessarily malicious.
She said: “People quite like the wicker men and the trouble is people want to play with them, so I suspect somebody’s tried to climb it or something. I’m not angry because at a young age I might have done the same thing. It’s annoying because I have to sort something out that shouldn’t need to be sorted.
“I didn’t think they would be too much of a target. My chief worry was whether they’d be set fire to. If people really didn’t like it they would do something worse to it.
“At least whoever did it noticed it (the sculpture).”