"Having art that is provocative, controversial to the point where it has been now immortalised in T-shirts and kind of entered the zeitgeist of ironic youth culture - that is actually what creative cities do," Cr Cox said.

"You have provocative art that gets people talking and there is no piece of art in the city that has stirred passions like this one.

"If you want to provoke people, to make people interested in art and have big philosophical conversations about the point of it, we've done a really good job." She worried if the motion was successful it would be "a sign of us being kind of small-minded and unable to kind of appreciate the complexity of art and be a grown-up city".

Story by Glen Humphries in the Illawarra Mercury, 30 July 2024.