In his new exhibition, Ron Mueck wants nothing left unsaid
We speak to the curator behind the largest exhibition ever put on of the sculptor's hyperrealistic work, where we discuss his powers of observation, folkloric origins, and what, at 67, else he wants to say
RON MUECK was sitting in the passenger seat of his wife’s car one day when he spotted on the pavement a teen couple: their posture facing inward as if about to kiss; the lanky man dressed casually in a baggy polo shirt and cargo shorts; the woman in a striped singlet and denim shorts. But as the car drove off, Mueck caught a glimpse of the man grabbing the woman’s wrist tightly, her fingers flexed and pointed as though attempting to break free. Never to be seen again, Mueck scribbled the scene on a parking ticket.
The details of his observation would form the basis of Young Couple (2013), one of the 15 works displayed in Mueck’s new exhibition at the Art Gallery of New South Wales, titled Encounter. Known for his mythological use of scale, Mueck rendered Young Couple no taller than a toddler, encouraging us to look down and pace around the work like a specimen in a lab. And like scientists, we hypothesise: Are we witnessing an act of protection or coercive control? “These little pointers to a relationship are important for him to have,” says exhibition curator Jackie Dunn, “we’re almost made aware of how we can never really know what that relationship is.” It’s the endless ‘what ifs . . .’ we ask of each other as strangers.
Coming into the exhibition, you feel inclined to discuss Mueck’s works by theme, the most common being birth, death, and humanity, based on the demographics of his subjects. But Mueck doesn’t work thematically, but rather makes, what Dunn calls, moments of “little liveliness” the subject itself. “What moment is going to tell everything [he] can about this character?” she continues. This curatorial approach allowed Dunn to move past the immediate spectacle of Mueck’s celebrated hyperrealism, to get under the silicone and fibreglass skin of his works, to reveal interior worlds.
Marking the artist’s largest exhibition ever – gathering works from around the world, and a homecoming for Mueck, who has lived in the UK since the mid-’80s, for more than a decade – Dunn speaks about each room in Encounter as psychological “groupings” that have consistently shown up in his 30 year career as a sculptor. Paired with Young Couple is Woman with Shopping (2013), another observed scenario on a London street of a weary-eyed mother holding her shopping and her baby swaddled under her coat); and Spooning Couple (2005), a fictional example of a relationship growing apart in their uncomfortable intimacy.
Mueck’s decisions on scale are intuited by the desired effect of how viewers gather their observations. “Miniaturising something makes you interiorise it,” says Dunn. “[It’s] this wonderful sense of taking it on board, almost like a chocolate or something that you covet – it’s so tiny.” Contrast that to the gigantic Pregnant Woman (2002) – like “looking up at a kind of geography of a body” – who has the first room all to herself and leads into the miniature trio.
The language, then, surrounding Mueck’s sculptures, their scale, and how they engage with their audience often verges on folkloric. Woman with Sticks (2009-10) depicts a miniature nude woman with her gaze looking outward to the audience, beckoning you to witness her labour to transport a bundle of impossibly large branches. It’s hypnotising to meet her gaze; to gladly follow on her epic quest like the Pied Piper. Dunn credits this to Mueck’s upbringing in Melbourne, to his German toymaker parents and their “very strong northern tradition of those kinds of fantasies”. Mueck enjoys this language so much that the exhibition’s audio guide features pieces by local writers, letting their own interpretations of these interpersonal works run wild.
Yet interestingly, Dunn admits that Mueck has put some distance between himself and his parents. Having never trained formally, Mueck spent his childhood holed up in his room as “a crazy creative kid” creating the faces on dolls and puppets his parents would task him with finishing. A fruitful, nearly 20-year career working in special effects for advertising and film followed, honing his skills on The Muppets set with Jim Henson. As a self-taught artist, “he never needed to go to art school, but there’s a slight self-consciousness about that, sometimes,” observes Dunn. “And because he doesn’t really engage in the art world, he doesn’t have those conversations about his work, in the way that a lot of artists do.”
Notably, the works Mueck found the most difficult to discuss with Dunn were his newer ones. It started with chicken/man (2019), considered by Dunn the high-point of Mueck’s hyperrealism. The tableau sees a paunchy old man, his bed hair licked up and wearing nothing but white underwear, sitting at a dining table and staring down, if you can believe it, a chicken. It’s to happen upon this scene that invites us to craft a non-existent backstory, like, Are they in debate? Has dinner escaped the coop? Is the chicken a figment of his imagination? But ultimately, it’s the unknowability of their relationship, except one: the man portrayed is a deceased family friend of Mueck’s from the Isle of Wight, where he lives and works.
The opacity of Mueck’s work also comes with his elusiveness; he himself rarely engages with press and the art world to divulge his observations further on the less than 50 works he’s made in three decades. But then there’s Havoc, his newest work to date and the marquee of Encounter, a pack of eight giant grey dogs divided and barking at each other, made to resemble a “chaotic moment just before a fight that [Mueck] feels is our contemporary moment,” as Dunn put it.
Is he speaking at any moment in particular? “Ron never prescribes the ideas that he wants to work with,” she continues. “But I think you can’t help but feel the tensions and anxieties of our contemporary environment in this . . . He’s a politically thoughtful person, he’s very emotionally concerned about the state of the world.” With politics front of mind, indeed, this is Ron Mueck as audiences have never seen him before; Havoc could resemble the Parliament floor, or, with their scale, something fantastical like werewolves out of the Twilight saga.
Strikingly, with their hard stony finish, their means of attack, their “little liveliness”, are colourised in their red mouths, pink tongues, white teeth, and red rockets. “We asked at one point why they were all male as they all seem to have their little pricks at the ready,” says Dunn. “He said, ‘Oh, I’ve got no idea. I just wanted to add a little bit of toxic masculinity into the mix.’”
Mueck will turn 68 this coming May; Dunn says that he shares fewer and fewer words about his work as he’s gotten older. But it’s clear to her that what he has yet to resolve is what else he has left to say, and how. “When you look at the new work, you’ll see [it] almost like he said to himself, ‘I don’t know if I can take this [hyperrealism] any further. So I’m doing something a little bit different’,” says Dunn. “He feels quite vulnerable about putting [new works] on display because he knows that they’re not the same thing people expect from him . . . He doubts himself, which is a good thing in an artist, I always think. Unfortunately, not enough of them do that.”
Encounter is on view at the Art Gallery of New South Wales until April 12, 2026.
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