Spencer Tunick is an American artist whose dramatic installations have gained him a reputation as one of the most renowned contemporary artists working today. Working with large groups of nude volunteers, Tunick orchestrates intricately posed installations, recording the outcome via photography and film. The resulting images are among the most iconic of the past 20 years - and have changed the way both participants and viewers consider the human body.
‘The individuals en masse, without their clothing and grouped together, metamorphose into a new shape,’ says Tunick of his work. ‘The bodies extend into and upon the landscape like a substance. These grouped masses become abstractions that challenge or reconfigure one’s views of nudity or privacy.’
Spencer Tunick’s installations have taken place in cities across the world, from Montreal to Melbourne and Barcelona to Buenos Aires. In May 2010, Spencer Tunick came to Salford and Manchester.
Over one remarkable weekend in May, Tunick made a series of photographs and a new film of his multiple-site installation in Salford and Manchester. Volunteers were taken, via a caravan of heated buses, to eight locations over the weekend of 1 - 2 May and asked to pose naked while Tunick created the installation. The resulting photographic and film work will the be shown at The Lowry from 12 June - 26 September as part of the exhibition, Everyday People.
Salford and Manchester are two cities well versed in generating world firsts. Anyone familiar with them can reel off a list of the world-changing innovations born in these sister cities, from the beginnings of Free Trade to the birth of Socialism and Communism.
It is fitting that the work Tunick has created in Salford and Manchester also has its own set of ‘firsts’. The work is his first multiple-site installation. Rather than staying at a single site, Tunick worked in eight locations across Greater Manchester. And it is the first time that Tunick has responded to the work of another artist for the entirety of a project – the work of LS Lowry.
‘Salford and Manchester present an intriguing prospect for my latest UK installation based on both the rich industrial heritage that exists across both cities and the art of LS Lowry,’ says Tunick. ‘LS Lowry’s paintings depicting the mass of everyday people who contributed to the industrial machine of the 20th century also provide an interesting frame of reference in terms of the compositional possibilities of the installations.’
Spencer Tunick's temporary site-specific installations have been commissioned by the XXV Biennial de Sao Paulo, Brazil (2002); Institute Cultura, Barcelona (2003); Tha Saatchi Gallery (2003); MOCA Cleveland (2004) and the Vienna Kunsthalle (2008) among others.
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