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.
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 2002 his sculpture Pregnant Woman[1] was purchased by the
National Gallery of Australia for AU$800,000.
(Ron Mueck's sculptures shown below in order - Spooning Couple, Boy,
In Bed, Mask I, Mask II, Mask III, Two Women, Wild Man, A Girl, Dead
Dad, Mother and Child, Head of a Baby, Pregnant Woman, and Big Man)
