GETTING NAKED for Spencer Tunick’s art installation had seemed like a fantastic idea to twentysomethings Teresa and Krystle while enjoying drinks
over the weekend with an
English stag party in Temple Bar, Dublin.
But by 4.30am last Saturday morning, with a chill easterly wind blowing across Dublin’s South Wall, Teresa – “for God’s sake don’t use our second names” – was having a change of heart. “I’m fat and hairy and white,” she said in a voice that betrayed rising panic. “We haven’t waxed,” explained Krystle.
Wearing the faces of condemned women, they walked unsteadily in heels down the stone pier that juts for a mile out to sea. They joined more than 2,500 people, including their newly befriended stag party, who were preparing to take off their clothes for art and for Tunick.
The very persuasive American artist stood (fully clothed) on a cherry picker bellowing orders down to his subjects as the moment of truth approached.
“Take your clothes off people, come on, do it now!” he yelled through a megaphone at the soon-to-be-naked masses.
So they did, stuffing clothes into plastic bags and revealing themselves to each other and to the journalists standing at what we hoped was a polite distance away.
With the sea breeze and the cold stone of the walls, the dockland location seemed like it was going to provide more of an endurance test than Tunick’s first Irish installation as part of the Midsummer Festival in Cork last week.
Cheering each other on, the naked men and women walked along the wall towards Poolbeg Lighthouse. Most of them, anyway. Ten minutes later Teresa, still fully clothed, could be seen making her way back down the pier.
“There’s people here for the wrong reasons,” she said.
“Naked guys checking you out
and making comments. Basically I am too white and too uptight to get naked in public. I’m off to get some chips.”
A few minutes later there was another deserter. “I’d love to stay,” said a skinny man jogging along the wall. “But I didn’t think it would take this long and if I don’t go now I’m going to get clamped”.
The others stayed put despite all the waiting around. Soon the crowd looked like a porcelain army lined up from the lighthouse to the Half Moon swimming club which became the Full Moon swimming club for the duration. The Stena Line passenger ferry managed not to crash into the pier as Tunick ordered his naked troops into standing and foetal positions. An hour later they returned shivering and smiling to their bags of clothes.
Priscilla Groves from South Africa and James Kennedy from Dublin had come as a couple, figuring there was safety in numbers. “Everyone was happy and in good humour, nobody seemed self-conscious,” reported James. “You didn’t get the feeling people were looking at each other, It was just a really positive experience,” said Priscilla.
Then Krystle appeared, cold but happy. She said she enjoyed the naked photo-shoot despite being abandoned by her friend.
“When you think about being naked with a lot of other people you think it’s going to be awful, sexually inappropriate and embarrassing but it was very normal, very natural, the least sexual thing I’ve ever done in my life,” she said.
“There was a good bit of messing, saying cheese when we had our bums facing the camera, that kind of thing. Basically we were a bunch of naked Irish messers. It was fun, I felt free.”
As heavy rain began to fall, most people decided not to take Tunick up on his offer of one more shoot on the beach. But with a bit of coaxing a few hundred people ran naked onto the sand for what one participant described as “the money shot”; a crowd of rain-soaked nudes standing ankle deep in water close to the Poolbeg power station.
The mostly white bodies on the beach, translucent now and tinged with blue, did aerobic exercises to beat the cold.
Buttocks shivered as far as the eye could see but still they laughed and cheered and sang “Ole, Ole, Ole”.
After five minutes it was over. There was a dash to the shore to retrieve clothes.
Afterwards, Tunick walked around handing out flyers for a much smaller installation that took place at apartments in Dublin’s Docklands in the early hours of yesterday morning. Participants called out thanks for what they told him had been a liberating experience.
“No, thank you, brave and beautiful people,” he said.
