Look Twice: Ron Mueck and the Weight of Being Human
Image credit: Ron Mueck preparing Havoc, 2025 for display in the Ron Mueck: Encounter exhibition at the Art Gallery of New South Wales, artwork © Ron Mueck, photo: Art Gallery of New South Wales, Felicity Jenkins
I have encountered Ron Mueck’s work many times over the years, including the 2010 survey at QAGOMA (could that really be 16 years ago?), and yet each viewing feels distinct. His sculptures are now so familiar, even iconic, but familiarity never dulls their effect. This new survey, Ron Mueck: Encounter, also includes works I hadn’t seen before. Now that I have moved past the initial suspension of disbelief, I take great pleasure in observing the small details, the mottling of skin, the tension held in a shoulder, the quiet vulnerability embedded in scale. The exhibition’s title is apt for the ways I observed people engaging with and “encountering” the work. I noticed people mirroring the bodies before them, tilting heads, folding arms, mimicking the poses. It’s reassuring to see people having such a visceral response to an exhibition.
The Art Gallery of New South Wales’s survey brings together key works from across Mueck’s career alongside a major new commission. The exhibition positions the Australian-born sculptor not simply as a master of hyperrealism but as an artist deeply concerned with the emotional and existential dimensions of contemporary life. I remember going to see the 2010 exhibition with my two small girls and their grandmother. They marvelled at the enormous Pregnant Woman (2000), her scale writ even larger against their own diminutive stature, and at the artist’s Dead Dad (1996-97), which garnered him international attention after its inclusion in Sensation: Young British Artists from the Saatchi Collection. Their encounter with Mueck predated their experiences with social media and the widespread use of AI as a tool in contemporary life. At the AGNSW, I saw people taking photos, mugging for the camera with the Big Man (2000), uploading stories to social media, and live-streaming. But I also saw joy in the simple act of interacting with and reacting to the physical scale and monumentality of Mueck’s sculpture.
Image credit: Installation view of the Ron Mueck: Encounter exhibition, featuring Couple Under an Umbrella, 2013, Giverny Capital Collection © Ron Mueck, photo © Art Gallery of New South Wales, Felicity Jenkins
Mueck’s sculptures are immediately arresting. Rendered with extraordinary technical precision - every pore, vein, crease and strand of hair meticulously realised - they occupy an uncanny space between lifelike presence and sculptural artifice. Realism alone has never been the point, because Mueck’s figures are almost always altered in scale, either enlarged to monumental proportions or reduced to intimate, near-miniature forms. Realism is important, though, in this age of AI, fake news, and half-truths. In the digital realm, the gloves are off. It’s increasingly difficult to ascertain what is real and what is, well, not. Never has the term digital manipulation been more appropriate. Looking at Mueck in the flesh is a good old-fashioned magic trick. What is real, what isn’t? Look twice, look again. Mueck’s manipulation of scale and form disrupts expectations, heightening awareness of one’s own body in relation to the work. In doing so, Mueck transforms realism into a psychological tool rather than a cheap trick.
Image credit: Ron Mueck, Ghost, 1998/2014, mixed media, 202 × 65 × 99 cm, YAGEO Foundation Collection, Taipei © Ron Mueck, photo: Alex Delfanne. Ron Mueck, Woman with Shopping, 2013 (detail), mixed media, 113 x 46 x 30 cm, Collection Thaddaeus Ropac © Ron Mueck, photo: Hauser & Wirth.
In that sense, Mueck is more than a mere illusionist. His sculptures are meditations on the human condition in all its frailty. The human figure is presented as fragile, self-aware and emotionally exposed. Works such as Woman with Shopping (2013), with her little baby tucked inside her coat, and Ghost (1998/2014) depict moments of everyday vulnerability: the weight of responsibility carried in a slumped posture, the awkward self-consciousness of adolescence frozen in gesture. They are neither heroic figures nor idealised bodies. Indeed, that might be one of the things audiences love most: the butt wrinkles, the errant hairs, and the sagging flesh. It’s all so familiar; prosaic and profound at the same time. Mueck gives us everyday humans caught in states of introspection, fatigue, or quiet unease. The sculptures seem less concerned with narrative than with capturing an internal state, a fleeting emotional condition rendered permanent.
The exhibition’s spatial choreography amplifies this effect. Many works are positioned for close-range encounter, encouraging slow, sustained looking. This slowness is another unique condition of the work. I watched viewers circle the sculptures, registering subtle shifts in expression and body language, and becoming acutely aware of their own gaze. Mueck is skilled at engendering both intimacy and discomfort. The viewer is an intruder on a private moment, even as the figure remains resolutely silent and still.
Image credit: Ron Mueck, Crouching Boy in Mirror, 1999–2002, mixed media, 43.2 × 45.7 × 28 cm figure; 45.7 × 55.9 cm mirror, The Broad Art Foundation, Santa Monica © Ron Mueck, photo: Walker Art Gallery, Gene Pittman
The exhibition reaches a particular intensity at its centre, with Havoc (2025), a monumental installation of snarling dogs locked in a charged standoff. It offers a departure from the stillness that characterises much of Mueck’s figurative work, introducing a sense of suspended action and latent violence. The scale is overwhelming, the energy compressed and volatile. While non-human, the work functions as an allegory for social anxiety, power dynamics and collective aggression. It’s a work that feels emblematic for the times we live in. What ultimately distinguishes Mueck’s practice is not technical virtuosity, remarkable though it is, but his ability to use realism as a conduit for empathy, to command attention, to slow the viewer down, and to create a space for reflection on youth, ageing, dependency, fear, connection, and so much more.
Ron Mueck: Encounter is at Art Gallery of New South Wales until April 12, 2026.
