SPENCER TUNICK

New York-based contemporary artist Spencer Tunick is widely celebrated for his elaborately posed installations of multiple nude figures in public settings. His temporary site-specific installations have taken place across the globe in cities including NewcastleGateshead, Melbourne, Santiago and Mexico City. Tunick gathers hundreds of volunteers to take part in his installations  which in the past have attracted anything from 100 - 18,000 participants.

Creating temporary site-specific landscapes involving many nude figures arranged in public places, Tunick’s installations follow on the tradition of land art. Working directly in the landscape, the artist uses the nude body as raw material to intervene and transform a chosen site, documenting the installations with photography and video which he then exhibits in a gallery context. The poetic whole resulting from individual bodies arranged in a sculptural way in an urban setting, challenges traditionally held views on nudity and privacy as well as social and political issues surrounding art in the public sphere.

Spencer Tunick was born in Middletown New York in 1967. He has been documenting the live nude figure in public since 1992 and has created installations around the world in locations including Belgium, Australia, Canada, USA and Brazil, gathering thousands of people at one time. His temporary site-specific installations in the past have been commissioned by the Vienna Kunsthalle (1999), Institut Cultura, Barcelona (2003), XXV Bienal de Sao Paulo, Brazil (2002), The Saatchi Gallery 03), MOCA Cleveland (2004) and BALTIC, Newcastle Gateshead, UK among others.