Spooning Couple
About this artwork
Presenting a psychological drama is one of Mueck’s chief aims in creating his sculptures. This is nowhere better seen than in ‘Spooning Couple’. The figures are lying together on a low plinth so that we look down on them from a bird’s eye perspective. The man, naked from the waist down, and the woman, naked from the waist up, are lying together, almost in a foetal position, her body fitting into the hollow of his – like spoons. They may be ‘spooning’ in a literal way, but they are in anything but a warm, loving embrace. Their expressions show them to be deep in their own separate worlds. The man almost catches our gaze in complicit acknowledgement that the bond between them seems to have broken down.
Updated before 2020
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artist:Ron Mueck (born 1958) Australian
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title:Spooning Couple
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date created:2005
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materials:Mixed media
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measurements:116.50 x 104.00 x 79.0 cm (installed size); 69.00 x 82.70 x 62.40 cm (figure size)
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object type:
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credit line:ARTIST ROOMS National Galleries of Scotland and Tate. Acquired jointly through The d'Offay Donation with assistance from the National Heritage Memorial Fund and Art Fund, 2008
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accession number:AR00033
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gallery:
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subject:
Ron Mueck
Ron Mueck
Mueck gained international recognition in 1997 for his sculpture Dead dad which was part of the infamous Young British Artists Sensation exhibition, devoted to the work of young British artists, at London’s Royal Academy. Mueck’s sculptures are all of the human figure, some smaller...
