The massively popular work of Australian artist Ron Mueck will debut in Canada Friday, when the National Gallery opens a new exhibit spotlighting his eerily realistic sculptures.

Though Mueck was in Ottawa this week to help set up the exhibition, he does not give interviews to discuss his work: disconcertingly life-like sculptures of people — saggy flesh, skin blemishes, body hair and all — but never life-size.

Mueck's work gives you 'a different sense of your own physicality,' says project manager Susanna Greeves. Mueck's work gives you 'a different sense of your own physicality,' says project manager Susanna Greeves.
(CBC)

"The sculptures are never human-size. They're larger or smaller than life," project manager Susanna Greeves told CBC News.

"I think as you move through the exhibition, that gives you a different sense of your own physicality. One minute, you're a clumsy giant and the next minute, you're a child at the end of the bed looking up at the mother."

One of the reasons Mueck's intricate works — usually created from a mix of materials including fibreglass, clay and paint — have garnered a cult fanbase is because he deals with themes people understand, according to Jonathan Shaughnessy, the National Gallery's assistant curator of contemporary art.

"Life, death, suffering, longing, loneliness and desire," Shaughnessy said.

Mueck is a relative newcomer to the world of international art, beginning his fine art practice in the mid-1990s after more than a decade of creating models, props and puppets for advertising and film, including the 1986 fantasy movie Labyrinth.

The London-based Mueck got a boost early on in his artistic career, however, when his work was noticed by influential contemporary art collector Charles Saatchi, who included Mueck's sculpture Dead Dad in the 1997 exhibit Sensation: Works from the Saatchi Collection.

After that exposure, Mueck's work began showing at prominent galleries, including in New York and London.

The National Gallery's Mueck show, which runs until May 6, is expected to draw large crowds of the artist's fans as well as curious onlookers, as his work has done at previous stops at Paris's Fondation Cartier pour l'art contemporain, the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art and New York's Brooklyn Museum.

Some galleries have had to extend hours and dates because of the exhibition's popularity.