Old Woman in Bed
Returned to lender
This work of art was on loan to the museum and has since been returned to its lender.The diminutive figure of the Old Woman in Bed, huddled in the fetal position under a pile of folded blankets, connects the earliest and last vulnerable stages in the cycle of life. Mueck’s figures are hyperrealistically rendered but are nevertheless uncanny in their unexpected scale, giving them a surprising emotional and psychological charge—in this work heightening the sense of the figure’s fragility. Finally, the elderly woman’s isolation on the gallery plinth underscores the inevitable solitude in which sleep is experienced and life is departed.
Artwork Details
- Title: Old Woman in Bed
- Artist: Ron Mueck (Australian, born 1958)
- Date: 2000
- Medium: silicone rubber, polyester resin, cotton, polyurethane foam, polyester and oil paint
- Dimensions: 24 x 94.5 x 56 cm; pedestal: 100.3 x 94.5 x 56 cm
- Classification: Sculpture
- Credit Line: National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa. Purchased 2001
- Rights and Reproduction: © Ron Mueck Courtesy the artist, Anthony d’Offay, London and Hauser & Wirth.
- Curatorial Department: Modern and Contemporary Art