Setri goes to the Ron Mueck exhibition

I only knew about the Ron Mueck exhibition coming to Brisbane when I saw Bec's (earthkissed) blog about her visit. I've long thought Mueck a really talented artist and thought it would be great to see his sculptures in real life, so when my brother and sister-in-law came to visit us a couple of weeks ago it was on our list of activities to do. Neither Richard nor Cil knew who Ron Mueck was, but they had probably seen pictures of his work in the media, I'm not sure. Art gallery visits aren't something they'd normally do, nor I (mainly because of the pretentious wankers that run the places and make them generally unpleasant to visit). However, we all had a great time at the exhibit currently being held at the Gallery of Modern Art (GoMA).

We took a lot of photos with the giant head, but I have a hard time picking a favourite.

Gam's entry in the 'father of the year' awards was rejected, for some unfathomable reason!

The little old ladies were tiny- at most about 30cm tall!

Setri yelled in the car for almost the entire journey- frustrating when stuck in sluggish South Bank traffic! He quieted down immediately upon being taken out of the car for a cuddle once we had found a park, and was perfectly behaved from then on.

There was a $12 per person fee to get in, however the exhibition was obviously ridiculously popular in spite of this, and for good reason. The sculptures are spectacularly life-like, but are created in varying un-life-like sizes that draw the eye in the same way a circus freak-show would. I only wish they'd had more of them- it wasn't Mueck's complete works.

There were signs encouraging people to take pictures of themselves with the Mueck sculptures and put them on a flickr gallery (we didn't bother with this) or email them to the GoMA (we didn't bother with that either). Lots of people were photographing the works but as far as we could see we were the only ones photographing a person next to them. It was great fun- a couple of teenagers asked to see some of the photos on my brother's camera (the batteries in ours had carked it the day before- great timing). Cil and I and Richard directed Gam on where and how to position Setri with the sculptures while Richard snapped pictures. Some of them came out really well; even the ones that didn't work so well (such as the chicken- because Setri decided he didn't want to sit up by himself) still looked pretty darn cool.

There were a few sculptures we didn't photograph Setri with- the little naked man at the entrance to the exhibition, the giant naked man sitting on a chair and a sunglasses-wearing dude on a pool lounge mounted on the wall. We probably should have done the naked men but didn't think of it (I'm sure we could have done it in a relatively non-creepy way- we managed the naked dude in a boat ok, I think). 

 Setri looking like a bona fide little adventurer in his rumpled suit and hat :)

It's amazing how the apparent size of the sculptures can be manipulated by perspective and how the photograph is taken. I love the photos we got of Setri from our visit, it's going to be a great set of memories.