Ron Mueck will make you feel weird

Maybe you know friends who are super comfortable with their bodies.  They'll go skinny dipping.  They'll get naked at parties.  Shower with their new boyfriends after the second date.  But even those people would feel quietly awkward if they walked into an empty room and found their elderly aunty sitting motionless and naked.

The cultural acceptance of the body is one of a certain type, and a certain context.  It's one thing to be looking at perfect young bottoms on the American Apparel website, but quite another to be confronted by the hyper-real, unglamorous naked sculptures by Ron Mueck.  Perhaps because we are so accustomed, so immune to the American Apparel style nudity - Ron Mueck's sculptures evoke such unease and such shock.

Perfect in so many ways, his characters have be re-scaled for an oddness that can only be embraced by being in the room with one of these hand-crafted sculptures.  They invite interaction and create new narratives every time some one different walks up to them.

Enjoy this gallery by Melbourne photographer John Raptis - visceralindustry.com