Ron Mueck's Wild Man and Others

Last week I was lucky enough to see some sculptures by the Australian born hyperrealist sculptor Ron Mueck.  I understand that he has exhibited his work in some pretty prominent places, the Tate Gallery and the Millennium Dome amongst others so it was a surprise to find him in a gallery in the outer suburbs of Melbourne.  I had no idea his work was there and had gone simply to have coffee with some friends.  So imagine my surprise to encounter 'Wild Man'.  'Wild Man' is absolutely realistic and lifelike to the last vein, hair and blemish on his body.  He sits naked, clutching his stool with a slightly fearful expression on his face.  You would believe he was real but for the fact that he is 3 meters tall.  He is absolutely huge and looking at him is a weird experience.  I wanted to just look at him for ages.  But I learn that this is the effect that Ron Mueck's work has on people.

Mueck was born in Melbourne to toy-making parents but emigrated to the United Kingdom as a child.  He started his career as a puppeteer and model maker for children's television and went on to work on the special effects for the movie Labyrinth.  

After this he started his own London based company making animatronics and photo-realistic props for the advertising industry.  Most of these props were just to be photographed from one angle and were therefore a mess from the angles that weren't to be seen.  Mueck became increasingly dissatisfied with this lack of perfection. 'Everything I was doing was geared towards that final flat image, the piece of print,' he says in one of his early interviews. 'Everything was predetermined. I was always telling someone else's story. I wanted to make something that a photograph wouldn't do justice to.'

His move from commercial model making to fine art came after a family holiday in America. Mueck is married to Caroline Willing, a scriptwriter, whose mother is artist Paula Rego. Whilst on the beach, Rego watched Mueck created a giant sand sculpture of a dragon for his two young daughters. Later, when she was working on a series of drawings for an impending group show at London's Hayward Gallery, she mentioned that she needed a model of Pinocchio. Mueck created a 33-inch-tall, ultra-realist rendering of Pinocchio, wearing just Y-fronts and an rather embarrassed expression.

It was this Pinocchio that caught the attention of a passing Charles Saatchi.  He then bought the sculpture Dead Dad that launched Mueck's career as a fine art sculptor.

Dead Dad is a perfect sculpture of a naked male corpse but about two thirds of the actual size.  A close inspection reveals the amazing detail of the stubble on the chin to the yellowing toenails.  Small but massive in its impact.  This is the only one of Mueck's sculptures that he has used his own hair for. 

All of Mueck's sculptures faithfully reproduce every detail of the human body, but play with scale - they are either huge or tiny and it is this playing with scale that makes them so visually disconcerting.  He also imbues his figures with a sense of vulnerability or physical exhaustion which makes the viewer sympathetic towards them even when they are totally out of proportion.  This exhaustion is evident in the huge Pregnant Woman which is owned by the National Gallery of Australia.  Mueck works primarily with fiberglass, resin and silicone.

Other notable sculptures include Boy which was displayed in the Millennium Dome, the huge newborn baby, the awkward pubescent girl - Ghost, the spooning couple and the two old ladies.  As well as the huge woman in bed and woman giving birth.  These can be seen in the video clip below.

Whether you like his work or not, he certainly has made sculptures that photographs don't do justice to.