Lesson learnt

Ron Mueck | Mask

Life’s been getting me down a bit lately. It’s that sinking feeling you get when you realise that, despite six years of university and two lots of letters after your name, you’re still unemployable.

It’s been a tough semester.

So today, on the day I was scheduled to start studying for my one remaining real exam this semester, I instead took a ‘personal day’.

And oh it was a lovely day.

It started out at Sassafras, with a big cup of tea and a book. I sat at one of the benches looking out onto the street, impeding I-don’t-work-Thursdays-man next to me’s access to condiments.

“Excuse me, could you please pass the pepper.”

“Excuse me, could you please pass me a sachet of sugar”.

“No. Raw sugar.”

Dude, just reach. It’s fine. Really.

(I just looked up ‘condiments’ on Wikipedia to make sure it included things like pepper and sugar. It does. Who would have thought? I always associate ‘condiment’ with garish sauce bottles).

Today, I was one of those people I’ve always been jealous of. The ones in the cafes in the middle of the day, by themselves, perfectly content with the company of only themselves and a book, or perhaps a laptop.

I was amazed by the number of people, just around.

Who are these people?

Why aren’t they doing something? Why aren’t they at work? Or at uni?

As you can see, this ‘personal day’ has been a long time coming.

Next on my agenda was a trip to GoMA, where I made a visit to the much lauded Ron Mueck exhibition recently arrived from Victoria, and did something I’d never done before: I went on a guided tour.

Then, I rounded the day off with a run, and so much lentil curry that I couldn’t breathe quite properly anymore. Now, I’m happily recounting the experience with Sky Blue Sky as a soundtrack.

Why am I telling you this?

Well, because I learnt a lesson at the Mueck exhibition. That lesson was that I shouldn’t feel guilty about taking this day off - I was living Mueck’s message.

Mueck, you say?

Mueck (in German: Murk; in Austray’n, Mew-eck) is an Australian born, London-based sculptor who makes extremely lifelike models of, usually, humans.

I’ve talked about his work before, when GoMA was exhibiting In Bed. (Which, incidentally, is owned by the Queensland Art Gallery. I knew this. A particularly opinionated woman on the tour did not know this and claimed it had never been on exhibition before. Don’t worry, she stood corrected before long).

Mueck’s works are incredible, not only for their realism, but also for their depiction of the human condition. They’re not only sculptures, they’re psychological portraits.

Ron Mueck | In Bed

In Bed is a depiction of Mueck’s wife, caught in a moment of peaceful introspection. She is rather large, and lies at eye-height with her onlookers. Despite your intellectual understanding that this is a sculpture, the realism with which the piece is made tricks you into expecting her to blink, or move her arm and climb out of bed.

Ron Mueck | A girl

Sticking with the theme of ‘large-scale’, this baby girl is approximately five metres long - ladies, stop thinking about it - and she’s actually kind of beautiful. The detail is magnificent - her eyes are shiny, her hair is matted, her finger and toenails are clear and frail and she looks genuinely affronted to be so suddenly brought into the world.

Ron Mueck | Old Woman in Bed

This was perhaps my favourite, and starts to get more to the root of Mueck’s work as psychological portrait. Here we see a woman in her last moments of life. She is tiny, curled up, frightened. The work is confronting, because we know it is an experience we will all have. And whilst the exhibition contains another work, below, depicting a dead body, it is this one that is most heart-wrenching.

Ron Mueck | Dead Dad

Dead Dad is the work that brought Mueck to prominence. It was one of three works commissioned by the Saatchi Sensation exhibition of Young British Artists. It depicts Mueck’s dead father.

The point?

These works are about the human condition. They’re about the process of life and living. Why is the baby so huge and the dying woman so small? Because the bringing forth of new life is big, and noisy, and confronting, whilst death is small, and human, and inevitable.

Mueck wants us to see that life is happening now, and that we should be aware of it, and appreciate it. By taking time out to reflect and be at peace.

He doesn’t want us to drift through, out of control with no thought of the future.