Artist Room: Ron Mueck
We visited Wolverhmampton Art Gallery today to see the 'Artist Room: Ron Mueck' exhibit. Loved the banner hanging from the entrance!
With reference to the censorship of Annabel's quilt at World Quilt this week, both the Ron Mueck and the Pauline Boty (more on that in a moment) exhibitions featured nudity and of course, there were no warning signs, just plenty of people, including families with children, enjoying the art and not being at all offended.
Whether you're familiar with Ron Mueck's work or not, it's still quite startling to walk into the gallery and share the room with this strange characters. Uncomfortable in their spaces the figures are larger or much smaller than life.
I made Mom and Amelie stand next to this guy for scale. (My apologies for the less than brilliant photos, the light was quite low and I was just snapping away on my iPhone.) Looking rather shifty, it was his feet that make me feel odd. They are realistic, un-nervingly so, it seems that at any moment those toes will curl. I'm a but funny about feet, so giant ones are almost too much to look at!
With reference to the censorship of Annabel's quilt at World Quilt this week, both the Ron Mueck and the Pauline Boty (more on that in a moment) exhibitions featured nudity and of course, there were no warning signs, just plenty of people, including families with children, enjoying the art and not being at all offended.
Whether you're familiar with Ron Mueck's work or not, it's still quite startling to walk into the gallery and share the room with this strange characters. Uncomfortable in their spaces the figures are larger or much smaller than life.
I made Mom and Amelie stand next to this guy for scale. (My apologies for the less than brilliant photos, the light was quite low and I was just snapping away on my iPhone.) Looking rather shifty, it was his feet that make me feel odd. They are realistic, un-nervingly so, it seems that at any moment those toes will curl. I'm a but funny about feet, so giant ones are almost too much to look at!
Accompanying the completed works was a room of maquettes, drawings and photos of his studio space. I loved this section of the exhibition. It's always fascinating to find out more about the construction process, especially when it's one that's so alien to my own. They're made from polyester resin, but there were also working models in wax.
In the next gallery was an exhibition of works by Pauline Boty. She was a Pop artist working in the same period as Peter Blake et al. I'm not usually a fan of Pop Art, but I did think that the composition she'd used in several pieces was quite quilt-like. For the painting above (details below) she was inspired by the lyrics of a song and included text on the painting. With the TXT Message workshop coming up this weekend I've been thinking a lot about using text so it was interesting to see her take.
Thanks for dropping by,
Laura
x
Really interesting exhibits. Ron Mueck's work is so realistic it's a bit unnerving. Would love to see his hands. How lovely to see that they're not being hidden at all. Imagine! ;)
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