At first, it’s the sheer technical brilliance of his figures that impresses. From the stubble on the chin, to a mole on the neck, the attention to detail is breathtaking. The real power, however, is in the way Mueck uses pose, gesture and scale to engage our emotions, to enter into the psyche of the figures he depicts.

The suspension of disbelief is vital to his overarching concern, which is to capture those key moments in our passage through life which represent the important stages of our changing self-consciousness and relationship with the world. In his work to date Mueck has dealt with the themes of birth, infancy, youth, adolescence, sexual maturity, middle age, old age and death.

Closely connected with his exploration of the Ages of Man is Mueck’s interest in human types, temperaments and emotional states of mind. Again, Mueck combines the individual and often personal with traditional metaphors. The woman in In Bed (2005), for example, is a classic image of melancholia.