Anyone who’s been in a room with a Ron Mueck sculpture has probably felt a few, often conflicting, sensations. The Australian artist is a master of both anatomy and the human experience, from birth to death, and all the beauty and mess in between.
Mueck grew up in the family business of puppetry and doll-making and began his career in film, TV and advertising. Artistically, he had his breakout moment (like many) in the 1997 group show, ‘Sensation’ at London’s Royal Academy of Arts, where the artist introduced the world to his sculpture Dead Dad, a three-foot representation of the artist's father. The piece dropped jaws and emotional barriers with its uncanny realism and its profound, agonising embodiment of grief, and parental bonds.
