2015.03.17 Escape
It's an art show with a difference: the art is not hanging or standing up, and the spectators are nude.
In what will be the first-ever ‘naked tour’ to be held at Canberra’s National Gallery of Australia, a select group of viewers — up to 150 over three days — will have the chance to strip off and experience the gallery’s summer blockbuster exhibition by American artist James Turrell: A Retrospective, which explores the American artist’s love of light and landscape.
The exhibition — which spans the 70-year-old artist’s career — includes a total of 50 works, such as 10 light installations, projection pieces, installations, holograms, drawings, prints and photograms.
The naked tour — an idea of Turrell’s — was first introduced in Japan, which saw spectators view one of his works while completely naked.
This time, the entire exhibition will be open to those brave enough to shed all layers, and will be led by experienced nude tour guide Stuart Ringholt, a Melbourne-based artist who has collaborated with the NGA for this exhibition.
Ringholt, who has been running naked tours for years, says the light installations are immersive and best experienced without clothes.
“Intellectually, it is an interesting idea, nudity,” Ringholt tells News Corp Australia.
“Turrell’s work is very minimal, very reductive — he doesn’t work with materials like a quintessential artist, such as clay, paint and other traditional materials: he just works with light.”
Clothing, Ringholt says, “materialises the spectator” and overwhelms the direct relationship of light-on-body.
“The nude viewer is reduced to just themselves, because there is no second skin,” he says.
“This second skin — clothing — carries colour … and the body on its own can feel the vibration to colour.
Despite the connection to art, undressing in public — and among strangers — is also part of a wider culture “of using nudity as protest”, says Ringholt.
“It is against the law to be nude in public in Australia, and by being nude you are breaking the law: but because we closed the museum to a certain few, it becomes private space and also a space of protest,” he says.
Having the courage to take off one’s clothes in public is also a stance against sexism and a culture of sexualisation: “[Being nude] is as much about art as it is about the discussion of how we navigate our bodies when nude.
“We’re actually less sexualised with our clothes off — when you’re clothed, it engages the imagination: there is something very sexy about a beautiful ankle in a beautiful shoe, or clothing that frames the body beautifully.
“Whereas when it’s all out, people start focusing on the face — it’s no longer about the butt, the hairy bits and the nipples.”
The artist says that younger men, in particular, find it difficult to get their gear off: “There are always more younger women than younger men, who are very fearful of getting shrinkage”.
Ringholt, however, is adamant that this is not a marketing ploy to get people interested in contemporary art.
“It is not an April Fool’s joke … and it’s not part of self-promotion,” he says.
“I’ve been running these tours for about four years … and the media, for some reason, takes a great interest in this idea that people are going to be nude.”
He says that Australia’s “prudish” culture is behind the national interest in nudity, and that in Europe, “this wouldn’t even be newsworthy”.
