Spencer Tunick - Everyday People

To celebrate 10 years of ‘creative excellence’, The Lowry has commissioned New York artist Spencer Tunick to create ‘Everyday People’. Don't miss the iconic images at the bottom of the page...

Tunick is renowned for his unusual naked bodies’ art
installations at various places throughout the world.

He uses photography and video to capture his nude ‘living sculptures’ which have included women on bicycles (Amsterdam); people crouched in foetal positions (Mexico City and Barcelona); stood in the theatre stalls (Bruges); and on the steps of Sydney Opera House. One installation created for Greenpeace, at a Glacier in the Swiss Alps, was to highlight climate change and global warming.

However, Everyday People is Tunick’s first multiple site installation. It was photographed over 2 days (May 1st & 2nd) in eight secret locations in and around Salford and Manchester, including Angel Meadows, Danzig Street and Peel Park. Over 4,000 volunteers applied to be part of Everyday People, which required 500 people for each 2 day shoot. No one gets paid for participating, but they all get given one of Tunick’s limited edition prints. At his wishes, the volunteers were taken in heated buses to these locations and asked to pose according to his requirements for this project. (Someone observed that they’d never seen such a variety of bathrobes on display)!

Peel Park was specifically chosen because it is where LS Lowry frequently painted and the nearby Salford School of Art is where he studied for ten years. Lowry is an internationally renowned artist ~ his work now sells for millions of pounds. The largest collection of his paintings and drawings is housed at the Lowry itself, but other works can be found in various public and private collections around the world including the Tate Gallery, the MOMA in New York and the Christchurch Art Gallery, New Zealand.

The concept of Everyday People was to focus on ordinary
men and women referencing Lowry’s distinctive style.

So on a bright, but cold May Day, naked people of all ages, shapes and sizes, ran down the banks of Peel Park and dispersed across the grass, posing in specific positions according to Tunick. He encouraged his participants to jump up and down to keep warm, before instructing the women to look east towards the sun and the men to look west. Then it became like a mass naked ‘musical statues’ whereby he asked everyone to move about and then suddenly freeze.

The most memorable image of the morning was when Tunick arranged everybody around the central flower beds in the park, and then later created an almost ‘May Day-like’ dance with a central figure with outstretched arms in the middle of a circular flower bed.

Tunick is well known for ensuring that all of his volunteers are well choreographed and that they do exactly as he says, employing a megaphone for additional effectiveness. There was nothing sexual about the display and certainly no inappropriate situations. However, a couple of his male participants were given extremely short shrift when they began ‘doing their own thing’ in one circle!

Some of the volunteers spoke about the experience afterwards. Jon Vogler ~ a retired engineer now doing a BA in fine art ~ said that he first heard about the project in his life drawing class. ‘I knew about Tunick’s work and thought it would be a great thing to do,’ he said. ‘I was impressed by his speed and efficiency, and how everyone was very laid back and matter-of-fact about it all.’

The weather is important in Tunick’s installations ~ he was happy with the cloud coverage throughout these shoots. After the first day’s installations, Tunick said, ‘I think the people in Salford paid attention and wanted to make art. I didn’t miss anything. I am very happy on how it went. I spread the bodies today to see the grass. It’s not so much a covering of bodies, but a sprinkling of bodies.’

‘I think being naked creates a new meaning for the background. It creates a relationship between the concrete world and the real world. The real world is us and everything around us is temporary.’

Everyday People will be shown at the Lowry from June 12th 2010 and will run until September 26th.

Written by Alison Bell