Spencer Tunick at The Lowry. A naked tale of two cities.

Susie Stubbs heads to a press launch at The Lowry and finds people ready to take ‘a cold plunge for art’s sake’

Spencer Tunick, the American artist known across the world for his mass nude photographs, is in Manchester. To be more precise, Spencer Tunick is in the building that takes its name from the LS Lowry paintings hanging behind him – Salford Quay’s Lowry art centre.

The artist is at The Lowry today for the press launch of his latest work. This weekend, he will stage his first UK installation in almost five years, photographing 1,000 naked people in eight secret locations across Salford and Manchester. Although Tunick has done this sort of thing before, he’s proposing to do something different here. The reason? It’s all down to a certain Salfordian as, for the first time, Tunick intends to respond directly to the work of another artist – LS Lowry.

Tunick tells those gathered at the press launch that it is the ‘mass of bodies’ depicted in Lowry’s work, those ordinary people moving through an industrial landscape, that provided the theme for this latest commission. ‘The mass at work inspired me,’ he says. ‘It is evidence of what is possible in the city when industry has left. Culture has elevated Manchester to new heights, and to me the naked body represents culture coming into the city.’

There is another new approach at play here, too. During the weekend Tunick will attempt his first multi-site installation, working across eight different locations to produce a series of interlinked photographic images. The logistics of doing so are not to be sniffed at, as getting permission for one location alone is normally difficult enough. But Tunick says that Lowry curator Kate Farrell ‘is my hero in Manchester – she has performed a miracle here’.

To her credit, it seems she has: being at The Lowry this morning was akin to seeing a minor miracle in operation. Staff, police, participants, journalists, technical teams, local authorities and even bus drivers are organised and ready to go. Almost every member of staff I spoke to told me they were going along this weekend, either to help out or to get their kit off. There is an air of palpable excitement – and a genuine desire to be part of something that the artist himself has dubbed ‘a naked tale of two cities’. Bring on the weekend.

Susie Stubbs is the Editor of Creative Tourist. The installation in Manchester this weekend is only open to participants who have pre-registered. The resulting photographs and documentary film will go on display at The Lowry on 12 June (until 26 September). Free entry. Look out for more features, vodcasts and coverage on The Lowry’s website (as well as here, of course).

Image: Ohio (2003), Spencer Tunick, courtesy the artist.

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