Ron Mueck was born in Melbourne, Australia in 1958, but has lived in London for over 20 years now. He honed his extraordinary skills in making life-like figures during several years in film and television. He worked on the Muppets and was responsible for the special effects in David Bowie’s film Labyrinth. His sculptures, made with latex and silicone, amaze with the realism and their size.
Ron Mueck’s Pregnant woman 2002 was purchased by the National Gallery of Australia in 2003 with the generous support of Tony and Carol Berg, and has quickly become one of the works most sought out by visitors to the Gallery. Though intensely private, Mueck enjoys considerable international renown as an artist. Over the last ten years his work has been collected by major galleries and private collectors, and has been exhibited in the United Kingdom, Germany, Japan, Italy, the Netherlands, Mexico, the United States and Australia. Pregnant woman is a contemporary portrayal of motherhood, making reference to universal themes such as fertility, birth, the goddess, the iconography of the Madonna and Child, and to life itself. Mueck’s ability to portray the monumentality and strength of a pregnant woman, as well as her vulnerability and emotional intensity, creates a powerful connection between the work and the viewer.
Mueck’s process and techniques are a source of fascination, particularly in relation to his meticulous observation of the skin’s surface: its pores, the follicles of hair, the softness of a mole, the hardness of a nail and the shadows of veins just beneath the skin. These are the things that draw viewers to Pregnant woman and make the sculpture seem so real.
The Gallery’ focus exhibition, Ron Mueck: the making of Pregnant woman 2002, is part of its Travelling Exhibition program. This program makes works of art from the Gallery’s collection available to visitors throughout Australia, enhancing understanding and enjoyment of the visual arts, both nationally and internationally.
Ever since his poignant sculpture of his dead father’s small, naked, vulnerable body (Dead Dad 1996-7) caused such awe and admiration in the ‘Sensation’ exhibition at the Royal Academy in London in 1997, Ron Mueck’s work has come to epitomise a renewed interest among artists in a hyper-realistic sculptural representation of the human body. His work concentrates almost exclusively on the human figure, tracing our passage through life from birth to death. All his sculptures are made with an obsessive attention to realism, right down to the pores in the skin and the hair on the body. Mueck’s sculptures are so realistic that people find it hard to believe at first sight that they are not real.
