c.20th Mythological Beasts: At home with the Locust People 1975

Bonita Ely’s sculptural installation c.20th Mythological Beasts: At Home with the Locust People 1975 recreates a typical Australian suburban living room, in which an uncanny family of half-human, half-locust people sit on their settee watching Ely’s Sunset Video on television. The artist describes the work as:

. . . a classic image of a family relaxing, vegging out in front of the TV, but, importantly, they are watching polluted sunsets as entertainment. It seemed the most powerful scenario [to describe environmental concerns] — the nuclear family, surrounded by designs and decorative imagery derived from nature (we all love nature), oblivious to the pollution that they are breathing, living in and contributing to, an indication of our blind destruction of the natural world.