Ron Mueck's Monumental Sculpture "In Bed" to Tour to Five Queensland Galleries

Written by Bernard Hastings Tuesday, 13 December 2011 21:32

QUEENSLAND, AU - Arts Minister Rachel Nolan today announced monumental sculpture "In Bed" by Ron Mueck will tour five regional Queensland galleries in 2011-2012, as part of the Gallery of Modern Art’s (GoMA) fifth birthday celebrations. “Queensland Art Gallery is touring the breathtakingly life-like sculpture from September 2011 until July 2012, beginning with Ipswich Art Gallery, 10 September – 13 November, before traveling on to Thuringowa, Cairns, Mackay and Hervey Bay,” Ms Nolan said.

Ron Mueck began his career working on the Australian children's television program Shirl's Neighbourhood. He was the creative director and made, voiced and operated the puppets Greenfinger the Garden Gnome, Ol' Possum, Stanley the snake and Claude the Crow amongst many others. The show was made for Channel 7 Melbourne between 1979 and 1984, broadcast nationally and starred the ex-lead singer of Skyhooks, Graeme "Shirley" Strachan.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, and the Jim Henson series The Storyteller.

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 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 1999 Mueck was appointed as Associate Artist at the National Gallery London. During this two-year post he created the works Mother and Child, Pregnant Woman, Man in a Boat, and Swaddled Baby.

“This 10 month tour is great news for regional audiences and I am certain it will prove extremely popular.

“The Ron Mueck exhibition staged at GoMA last year was an outstanding success and this regional tour will provide those living outside of Brisbane the opportunity to also see one of Mueck’s largest and most engaging works.

“In Bed features a giant-sized, middle-aged woman reclining in bed, the scale of the work is approximately 1.6 metres high, 6.5 metres long and 4 metres wide.

“Ron Mueck’s astoundingly realistic sculptures are some of the most widely acclaimed works in international contemporary art.

“His 2010 exhibition at the Gallery of Modern Art was one of the Gallery’s most popular exhibitions, attracting more than 187 000 visitors. Since GoMA opened in 2006, the Queensland Art Gallery has delivered eight travelling exhibitions, six on tour programs, five lecture programs and four artist workshops to regional Queensland, attracting almost 300 000 visitors.

“Audiences are initially compelled by the scale of the work, but it’s the meticulous techniques used by the artist to create this hyper-realistic sculpture which inspires them to get up closer to investigate.”

Tour venues and dates:
Ipswich Art Gallery 10 September – 13 November 2011
Pinnacles Gallery, Thuringowa 19 November 2011 – 8 January 2012
KickArts Contemporary Arts, Cairns 14 January– 25 March 2012
Artspace Mackay 31 March – 20 May 2012
Hervey Bay Regional Gallery 26 May – 7 July 2012

In 2002 his sculpture Pregnant Woman was purchased by the National Gallery of Australia for A$800,000.

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