- We got a first look at Encounter, celebrated sculptor Ron Mueck’s largest exhibition ever staged in Australia.
- This Sydney-exclusive brings a stunning array of the artist’s hyper-lifelike sculptures, from the miniature to the monumental, to the Art Gallery of NSW.
- The exhibition opens on Saturday, December 6, and runs until April 2026.
There’s something undeniably confronting about coming face-to-face with a Ron Mueck sculpture. The Melbourne-born artist captures intimate moments, or “encounters”, sometimes awkward, sometimes uncomfortable, bringing them to life with the hyperrealistic depictions of expressions, postures and details.
His return to the Art Gallery of NSW, and indeed his return to Australia, is a big deal. The Director of the Art Gallery, Maud Page, began her introduction to the preview of Encounter by stating,
“It’s an exciting moment for Australian art, because let’s not forget that Ron Mueck is one of the most international, successful and beloved artists of our times.
She continued, “We’re doubly pleased that he’s here in Sydney, since the last time he had an exhibition, a solo show, here was 20 years ago.”
If Mueck’s recent exhibition in Seoul is anything to go by, where 100,000 people visited in just 20 days, Encounter is set to draw huge numbers in Sydney. Of the 15 sculptures featured in the exhibition, nine are making their Australian debut, with one never-before-seen work, Havoc, commissioned especially for Sydney.
We got a first look at the striking exhibition and spoke with curator Jackie Dunn about each breathtaking sculpture and the remarkable mind behind them.
The sculptures of Encounter
Page sets the stage for Mueck’s work, emphasising their variety, depth and detail:
“His astonishing, lifelike works are renowned globally, spanning intimate human moments, often unspoken, instinctual, primal, I would say, and always astonishingly varied in scale, exploring the big life themes of birth and death, but also beauty, connection, solitude and vulnerability.”
The exhibition hall is a crisp, stark white, directing all attention to the details in the sculptures that sit, stand and recline on white platforms. The first sculpture is Pregnant Woman (2002), capturing the exhausting toll of pregnancy: a massive figure appears weary, her arms raised in a gesture of self-soothing, with arms in the air and a huge, swollen belly. Her huge size emphasises the magnitude of her experience and discomfort. She’s the first sculpture we encounter, setting the scene for our invasion of intimate, human moments.
From left to right: Woman with Shopping (2013), Spooning Couple (2005), Ghost (1998/2014) (Image: Isabelle James).
The sculptures continue with Woman with Shopping (2013), a fleeting moment that perfectly embodies the title Encounter: Mueck captures a woman on the street, absorbed in the simple act of carrying her shopping. We see another intimate moment in Spooning Couple (2005), one of the much smaller sculptures in the exhibition, before coming across the huge Ghost (1998/2014), showing an awkward teenage girl looking self-consciously to the side.
Jackie Dunn reflects on the magnitude of this sculpture, stating, “Teenage awkwardness and discomfort in the body seem amplified”. Moving from the tiny Spooning Couple to the huge Ghost shows us how Mueck chooses to expand or shrink his sculptures, based on what feeling or figure is being conveyed in the moment.
Crouching Boy in the Mirror (1999-2002) is one of Dunn’s favourites. She tells us, “his back is one of the most exquisite parts of the whole exhibition”. We see the height of Mueck’s attention to detail and hyperrealism in the curvature of the boy’s spine and slight protrusion of his ribs.
One fun fact about Woman with Sticks (2009-10) is that the real branches are sometimes repaired with little pieces from the various places where the sculpture has been displayed. There’s a piece of twig repaired from Milan, which Mueck found in a local park, and a piece from Paris. Dunn reveals that a piece of Sydney may make it onto the work: “Now she has a little piece of twig from the Domain, which may or may not be attached to one of the willow pieces she holds”.
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Using the second most light-absorbing black paint in the world, Dark Place puts distance between us and the depressed-looking subject, heightening the expression on his face, making it one of Mueck’s most gothic works.
Couple Under an Umbrella (2013/15). (Image: Isabelle James).
Mueck was reportedly very happy with the Art Gallery of NSW’s lighting of Couple Under an Umbrella, stating that it had never looked better. The light coming through the umbrella represents the glow of the sun, casting warm light on the couple. It also illuminates the wedding ring on the woman’s hand, which you can see if you circle the sculpture.
The huge, unsightly sculpture Big Man came to life when Mueck was unable to get his life model to pose in his preferred way in their sitting. Mueck has therefore shown the big, naked and hairless man sulking in the corner, almost Shrek-like in his grumpy pose. Big Man is one of the few figures Mueck modelled off a real human, and even though it didn’t go to plan, we were left with an incredible depiction of the heavyset, angry giant.
Chicken/man (2019) was “the high point for hyperrealism for Ron”, Dunn tells us. The chicken’s feathers are fashioned from dove feathers, and each hair and mole on the man is carefully mapped out, with his startling look of bewilderment making the scene all the more absurd. This piece is placed right next to Mueck’s new work, Havoc, to show the point of difference at its maximum capacity between his old figures and his new work.
The politics of Havoc and its world debut
Havoc depicts a group of menacing, huge dogs as two packs face off and snarl at each other. It’s remarkably different from the domestic images we’ve seen already in the exhibition, and Dunn states that these new works are “a push away from that surface exactitude into gesture, dynamic form, groups instead of solitary figures or pairs.”
Mueck is reflecting the times in Havoc, and Dunn believes it to be more “overtly political” than his other pieces, as the snarling dogs represent the “tensions of our times, that are felt palpably by so many”. Mueck isn’t representing anything specific, she says, yet the fang-bearing hounds compel us to think about conflicts, feuding leaders and a pervasive anger above all. Placed in the middle of the exhibition that had, so far, just shown us domestic moments, the sculptures seem all the more ominous.
Commissioned especially for Sydney, the dogs of Havoc were shaped in clay before being finished in resin. Unlike many other works in Encounter, they lack colour and hyperreal detail, a clear signal that this is a brand-new work, marking a bold new direction for Mueck.
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The mysterious Ron Mueck
Mueck is a mysterious character in the art world, refusing to do any interviews on his work and creating much of his art in the sanctity of a studio on the remote Isle of Wight in the UK.
He was born in Melbourne in 1958 to German parents and assisted in the family toy-making business as a child. In the 1980s, he worked in the film and television industry as a puppeteer and puppet-maker, with the cult 1986 film Labyrinth among his credits. His career as a visual artist took off in 1996-7, with his sculpture Dead Dad gaining attention at an exhibition in London, helping him to establish his reputation.
Mueck’s work reveals a profound understanding of human experience, yet he shares almost nothing about it, creating a compelling tension between expression and ambiguity.
He works alone in his studio, crafting almost everything with his own hands, and Dunn explains to us that, for Mueck, there’s no need to verbalise the context behind his work, as his hands have already done that, with every detail seen on the sculptures. By preferring to let his art speak for itself, we’re able to put our own interpretations on each piece, and decide what it means to us and how we choose to relate to it.
Why you should see Encounter
Encounter is an extremely striking exhibition, one that lingers in your mind long after you’ve left the gallery. The combination of Mueck’s skill and artistry with the glimpses into raw human moments makes for some pretty confronting displays. Sometimes the sculptures make you recoil, and sometimes you feel a great deal of empathy for the subject. No recent Sydney exhibition has provoked a stronger response from me than this one.
My advice? Look out for all the little details, like the spine of Crouching Boy in the Mirror (1999-2002) or the shiny wedding ring on the hand of the wife in Couple Under an Umbrella (2013/15). Make sure you circle each sculpture (where you’re able to), and move in close to check out all the incredible details. Some encounters appear one way, yet when you look closer, the dynamic between two sculptures changes.
Encounter by Ron Mueck
Where: Art Gallery of NSW, Naala Badu, Lower Level 2, Sydney NSW 2000.
When: December 6, 2025- April 12, 2026.
Price: Adult tickets: $35, Youth: $18.
Get your tickets to Encounter by Ron Mueck here.
