"Dude you have to go see this giant, newborn baby"

I’d never heard of Ron Mueck until my friend brought up his exhibition over lunch. Shocked I could be so uncultured he whipped out his phone and preceded to flick through a multitude of photos featuring this 15-foot, blood stained baby. I was intrigued.

Visiting an art exhibition is like reading a dickens book. You always say you’re going to do it. You know you should do it but often more trivial past times, like season two of the hills, take precedence. It takes a bit more effort but once you take the plunge you never regret it. On the weekend I put on my highbrow hat and dragged my boyfriend to the Ron Mueck Exhibition at the National Gallery of Victoria.

I always feel a bit out of my comfort zone at this type of thing. I ‘m nervous that at any second someone’s going to come up and ask me what style I think the artist is aspiring to? And I’ll be exposed as an art fraud. Of course that didn’t happen. The gallery was full of all kinds of people from families to tourists to a group of giggly teenage girls. I quickly relaxed and found myself completely absorbed in the world of Mueck.

His work is awe-inspiring. He uses silicone and fibreglass to create sculptures so real I swear I could see the blood pumping and muscles tensing. His attention to detail is painstakingly flawless. He uses a tiny needle to apply each hair individually, drills each pore into the skin, and hand paints tiny veins and wrinkles- even adds perfectly scaled bruises and pimples.
What I found the most captivating was the expressions. From manic, to passive every sculpture captured a unique but familiar emotion. The way the skin creased, the half closed eye, the wrinkles on the forehead made everything was so real.

Take for example “The Wild Man”. He sits perched on his larger than life chair rigid, hairy and naked. With a crazed look in his eye he surveys his curious observers. He is nearly 9 feet high and his presence is very real. His legs are covered in thick black hair that stretches all the way up his thighs. His face is dominated by a smothering of coarse black hair laced with a few rogue greys. His eyes blood shot and manic convey vulnerability and fear. He so is alive studying him is both fascinating and discomforting.

The figures are intentionally disturbing. Mueck presents mankind in a raw and vulnerable state. His figures are exposed both physically and emotionally. For example “Dead dad” is an interpretation of Mueck's fathers corpse. The dead man lies completely naked on a white slab. There’s something morbidly fascinating about being so close to a corpse it’s so lifelike you feel almost perverted for being so intrigued.

Mueck is an Australian artists born right here in Melbourne. He studied art at Kew High School and worked in Australia as a puppeteer before moving to London to pursue his career in hyperealistic sculpture.

The exhibition is running until the 18th of April at the National Gallery of Victoria and it’s well worth the $15 dollar entry fee.

After all it’s not every day you see a giant 15-foot newborn baby.