THE country's first piece of floating sculpture could be on the move from its North-East home.

The £250,000 Ambit, installed in the River Wear at Sunderland a year ago, has been dogged with problems. The 70ft ring of steel's flourescent electric lights - designed to create a halo of light on the river - failed just a few weeks into its planned ten-year lifetime on the Wear. Rust was then discovered after five months in the water, and it has since become a target of vandals.

Now, city council arts officials are seeking National Lottery funding to take Alison Wilding's work on tour. It could end up appearing at the world-famous Biennale arts festival in Venice.

Public arts officer Piers Masterson said the artist was highly regarded in the arts world and Ambit had attracted international interest.

But he added: "Its image locally has not been everything we would have wanted. We feel that by going on tour we can build the profile of it and, hopefully, when it comes back to Sunderland it will have the impact we intended it to have at the outset.''

Vandals have tried to damage the sculpture by throwing breeze blocks at it and hacking through power cables.

Ambit will undergo tests tomorrow to see if it could survive in different waters.

The project was the winner of a design competition run by Sunderland City Council for artwork that would give the city a fitting landmark.

Officials hoped the 24 one-ton cylinders would create a tourist attraction to rival the Angel of the North at Gateshead.

But it attracted criticism. London art critic and First Review editor David Lee described Ambit as a waste of money and said it would break down within six months