Skateboard Deck - Ron Mueck, Mass

Dimensions: 20 x 81 cm
Made in Australia and designed exclusively for the NGV design store

Throughout history, the skull has been a potent symbol within the aesthetic lexicon of almost all cultures. It features prominently in art of the Renaissance and particularly in Dutch still-life painting and the vanitas tradition of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, where the skull represents ephemerality. The skull has also been used in other ways – in the skull and crossbones of the pirate Jolly Roger, and as a sign of Halloween and the Day of the Dead.

In a contemporary context, Mass has particular resonance. With the world grappling with enormous and intensifying challenges – the atrocity of war, pestilence, a changing climate, floods, fires and famine – it is a poignant monument for our times.

Ron Mueck
Australian born 1958
Mass 2016–17 (detail)
synthetic polymer paint on fibreglass
(1-100) 114.6 x 108.0 x 157.2 cm (variable) (each)
(1-99) 550.0 x 1487.0 x 1474.5 cm (variable) (installation)
(1-100) 550.0 x 1487.0 x 5081.8 cm (variable) (installation)
National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne
Felton Bequest, 2018
© Ron Mueck