Ron Mueck
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Ron Mueck (born
1958) is an Australian hyperrealist sculptor working in
Great Britain.
Mueck's early career
was as a model maker and puppeteer for children's television
and films, notably the film Labyrinth for which he also
contributed the voice of Ludo, and the Jim Henson series The
Storyteller.
Mueck moved on to
establish his own company in London, making photo-realistic
props and animatronics for the advertising industry.
Although highly detailed, these props were usually designed
to be photographed from one specific angle hiding the mess
of construction seen from the other side. Mueck increasingly
wanted to produce realistic sculptures which looked perfect
from all angles.
In 1996 Mueck
transitioned to fine art, collaborating with his
mother-in-law, Paula Rego, to produce small figures as part
of a tableau she was showing at the Hayward Gallery. Rego
introduced him to Charles Saatchi who was immediately
impressed and started to collect and commission work. This
led to the piece which made Mueck's name, Dead Dad, being
included in the Sensation show at the Royal Academy the
following year. Dead Dad is a rather haunting silicone and
mixed media sculpture of the corpse of Mueck's father
reduced to about two thirds of its natural scale. It is the
only work of Mueck's that uses his own hair for the finished
product.
Mueck's sculptures
faithfully reproduce the minute detail of the human body,
but play with scale to produce disconcertingly jarring
visual images. His five metre high sculpture Boy 1999 was a
feature in the Millennium Dome and later exhibited in the
Venice Biennale.
In 1999 Mueck was
appointed as Associate Artist at the National Gallery,
London. During this two year post he created the works
Mother and Child, Pregnant Woman, Man in a Boat and Swaddled
Baby.
