Childhood monsters take many forms: Japanese artist Etsuko Ichihara's has a head made from surveillance cameras that can hack into the minds of those who misbehave.
It's a reimagining of a creature from Japanese folklore called Namahage, transported to a futuristic Tokyo - instead of threatening lazy children in storybooks, Namahage's mind and social media surveillance ensures peace in the city.
Ichihara's monster features in a new exhibition SCI-FI: Mythologies Transformed, opening at Science Gallery Melbourne, which looks at the links between western science fiction and eastern spirituality.
The concepts of the science fiction canon, such as HG Wells' War of the Worlds, William Gibson's cyberpunk or the films of Christopher Nolan and Ridley Scott, can also be found in Taoism, Buddhism, Hinduism and Shintoism.
"Parallel worlds, inter-dimensional travel or transcendence, where we might upload our consciousness to the matrix, are familiar concepts in these much more ancient Asian spiritual traditions," explained Honor Harger, Vice President of ArtScience Museum in Singapore
Another artwork on show is Galactica V.2 Dharma Garden, which brings Hindu motifs together with science fiction, to imagine the Hindu goddess Lakshmi as a supernatural alien who visited earth and created life.
The exhibition opens up the male-dominated western world of science fiction to women and to artists from the Asia Pacific, said Harger.
Just like the dream worlds of the science fiction genre, the show is also an invitation to reflect on the real world and its possible futures.
One video installation, The Ways of Folding Space and Flying by Korean-based artists Moon Kyungwon and Jeon Joonho, is set in a world where much of the earth is underwater.
The exhibition was created with the ArtScience Museum and first shown in Singapore in 2023, but the version opening in Melbourne includes additional work by Australian artists.
SCI-FI: Mythologies Transformed is at Science Gallery Melbourne from Saturday until November 30.
