I think Ron is such an accomplished sculptor
he can make exactly what he wants to make
and it's amazing to see him sculpting in the studio
because the forms just sort of come out of nowhere
the process of sculpting may take anything from
a few week to many months
It's not a sort of miracle for him to achieve that degree of detail
because he is very technically proficient
The scale is very crucial
this head wouldn't be the same thing at all if it was smaller than life size
if it was a few inches or if it was ten feet long
it would have quite a different effect
Each hair is a piece of nylon line
which is sanded and painted and curled by applied heat
and then a little hole is drilled and the hair is inserted
It's always very interesting to take a work out of its own environment
and put it somewhere alien
Looking at the Easter island statue, the greatest statue
and Ron Mueck
It's amazing, it's wonderful watching visitors
look from the Mueck to the Easter Island statue
engage with the absolute realism of the surface and the texture of the Mueck
and then the great schematic abstractions of the Easter Island
and realising they're actually about the same thing
Every generation wants to go
beyond the bounds of its own human limitations
and that actually there is only a limited number of ways of doing that
and that's about scale it's about materials it's about texture
but what you can do with that is limitless