Life like ...like life ... life

Thanks to Cheryl Lawrie's beautiful and lyrical website and blog I've been looking at these brilliant photos of Ron Mueck's utterly extraordinary sculptures. The exhibiiton is in Melbourne which is not somewhere I'm likely to be going to any time soon so her writing about it has really opened up new horizons for me.
Cheryl's site is called "hold this space" some of the most moving posts are about experiences and projects she's involved in with prison chaplaincy. The site and blog tell the story of an exploration into alternative worship, public sacred spaces, ritual, justice and spirituality in Melbourne, Australia. She is the Director for Spirituality, Culture and Context in the Uniting Church in Australia. what a wonderful ministry to be involved in.
Here are two photos she took and some of what she wrote following her visit to the Mueck exhibition. It looks very exciting.

The review in the paper said that the crowd reaction was half the experience, and it was right. Normally when we come face to face with installations about humanity we don’t like what we see. We half turn away from it, and each other. I think it frightens us, maybe, or disgusts us… But people were walking around this one smiling, talking to each other. It was like this celebration of what connects us, rather than an avoidance of it. It’s hard to describe, but it’s different to how i’ve seen a crowd at an exhibition before.

Every time someone would approach one of the sculptures they would search out the eyes first and look into them. I did too. It was an unconscious, instinctive reaction. I think we were looking for wisdom or truth, and without being trite, it felt like we might have seen it.