A FAMILY of mannequins are looking for a new home.

Alastair, Jan and little Susie Carter, who make up The Picnic installation at the Worthing Museum and Art Gallery, will be made homeless later this month and their sculptor is hoping to find them a permanent place to stay.

The sculpture is built on a base of four shipping pallets that are covered in Astro Turf.

The family are shop mannequins whose clothing has been treated with a fabric hardener called Paverpol that turns the fabric hard and weatherproof.

The sculpture is interactive and visitors are invited to sit on the grass next to the purple frisbee and have their photo taken with Alastair, Jan and little Susie Carter.

Sculptor Tana Jackson explained that The Picnic was an offshoot of her four-year project, a life-sized interpretation of Leonardo Da Vinci’s The Last Supper.

Hers was one of just five submissions to be awarded a £500 grant by the Adur and Worthing Trust, and she said that made it all possible.

She said: "I've been wanting to do the piece for a long time but I never had the funding.”

The total material cost was nearly £1000, but Tana isn’t looking to sell her artwork.

She said: “It was lovely to see it displayed this summer at Henry House, the kids would sit with the family and have their photo taken.

“It’s designed to be interactive.”

Tana, whose art has to fit in around her full-time work as a administration firm’ operations manager, has similar pieces in her own back garden which have lasted seven years, so is confident that the artwork will have a good life still to come.

Plans to house the installation at Beach House Park in Worthing had to be shelved over fears of vandalism and now she has until October 24 to find it a new home.

She said: “I’m just looking for somewhere where it can be used to its full potential, maybe a department store or shopping centre, but anywhere where it could be housed outside securely would be great."

Alastair, Jan, and Susie are dressed in 1950s clothes and drinking from glass cola bottles to evoke the spirit of a bygone age.

“I wanted to go back in time, to when it was normal to go for a picnic and people didn’t just sit there on their mobile phones,” explained Tana.

Anyone interested in housing The Picnic should contact Tana by email on tana.jackson@yahoo.co.uk