Ron Mueck
Woman with Shopping

Woman with Shopping

© 2014 Ron Mueck

Woman with Shopping
Woman with Shopping
ArtistAustralian, born 1958
CultureAustralian
Titles
  • Woman with Shopping
Date2014
MediumMixed media, edition 2/4
Dimensions44 1/2 × 18 1/8 × 11 13/16 in. (113 × 46 × 30 cm)
Credit LineMuseum purchase funded by the Caroline Wiess Law Accessions Endowment Fund
Object number2021.596
Current Location
The Nancy and Rich Kinder Building
Gallery 313
Exposé

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Object Type
Description


Ron Mueck draws upon memories, reveries, and everyday experience as he approaches his subjects with extraordinary empathy. His intimate, understated sculptures portray birth and death, love and fear, vulnerability and compassion, prompting viewers to reflect upon their own experiences and those of others. Typically spending more than a year conceiving and making each figure, Mueck captures every physical detail with an astonishing degree of verisimilitude. The naturalism of his work, however, is undercut by the artist’s calculated play with scale: monumental figures can fill a gallery, while others stand no more than three feet high. In a rare interview from 2003, Mueck explained:  “I never made life-size figures because it never seemed to be interesting. We meet life-size people every day. [Altering the scale] makes you take notice in a way that you wouldn’t do with something that’s just normal.”

Woman with Shopping began as a single moment observed in the real world. While riding a bus near his North London studio, Mueck caught sight of a woman on a street corner, laden with an orange grocery bag in each hand and an infant cradled under her oversized coat, waiting for the traffic light to turn green. He immediately sketched these figures on the back of his bus ticket, the only scrap of paper at hand. Over the following year, Mueck converted the fleeting image into one of his most nuanced tableaux. 

 



ProvenanceThe artist; private collection, U.S.A.; [Thaddaeus Ropac, London]; purchased by the MFAH, 2021
Exhibition HistoryRon Mueck: Twenty-Five Years of Sculpture 1996–2021. London: Thaddaeus Ropac, October 12–November 13, 2021

Edition 1/4 of this sculpture was exhibited at the following:

New Works by Ron Mueck. Fort Worth: Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, February 16–May 6, 2018

Ron Mueck. Houston: Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, February 26–August 13, 2017

Ron Mueck. São Paulo: Pinacoteca do Estado de São Paulo, November 20, 2014–February 22, 2015


Edition 3/4 of this sculpture was exhibited at the following:

Ron Mueck. Dom Museum, Vienna, Family Matters, 4 October, 2019–August 30, 2020

Highlights: Fondation Cartier Collection. Seoul: Seoul Museum of Art, May 30–August 15, 2017

Ron Mueck. Tampere, Finland: Sara Hildén Art Museum, June 2–October 16, 2016

Ron Mueck. Paris: Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain, Paris, April 16–October 27, 2013

Ron Mueck Buenos Aires: Fundación PROA, November 16, 2013–February 23, 2014

Ron Mueck. Rio de Janeiro: Museu de Arte Moderna, March 20–June 1, 2014


Inscriptions, Signatures and Marks
N.A.
N.A.
Catalogue raisonnéN.A.

Cataloguing data may change with further research.

If you have questions about this work of art or the MFAH Online Collection please contact us.

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