We start arse first: two firm and fulsome buttocks, eye height and each double the size of my head. This will be visitors’ first encounter with the Art Gallery of New South Wales’ summer exhibition, Ron Mueck: Encounter – the largest ever Australian showing of the expat star sculptor’s work, spanning almost three decades.
Rounding the supersized figure, you feel a flash of understanding: she’s extremely pregnant, ready to pop, and her closed eyes and parted lips, as if exhaling, suggest a state of stoic exhaustion at being quite this gravid – in Sydney summer, no less.
