Spencer Tunick
Hales Gallery are pleased to present Spencer Tunick’s fourth solo show at the gallery. Tunick’s large scale, participatory installations involving thousands of naked bodies are well known around the world. This particular aspect of Tunick’s work combines sculpture, performance and land art that consistently features skilfully posed nudes juxtaposed in urban and natural environments. These installations are then recorded by Tunick through photographs and films. Explorations in Architecture focuses on a series of Tunick’s photographs which operate against the backdrop of architectural structures. Tunick integrates the massed soft forms with the harder, angular elements of the various buildings or public places he chooses to appropriate. A town square in Mexico City, a multi-storey car park in Amsterdam and outside the Sage Centre in Gateshead, UK, become useful formal devises, where the repetitive nature of the architecture is echoed in Tunick’s composition of bodies. Although Tunick freely embraces the aesthetics of a rock festival and consumer culture, there is an underlying political statement that comes from the mass gathering of people. In a time when political ideology is collapsing in favour of pragmatism, it is unsurprising that Tunick’s work occasionally forms a catalyst to peaceful protest or becomes a vehicle to highlight issues such as global warming or HIV. Tunick was born in Middletown, New York in 1967. He has exhibited widely. His temporary, site-specific installations have taken place around the globe in cities including Montreal, Melbourne, Lyon, Santiago, New York, Mexico City and Barcelona to name a few. Since 1994, Tunick has organised over 75 site-specific installations. Selected installations include: 2008 – Ernst-Happel-Stadium, Vienna, Austria; 2007 – Sagamore Hotel, Miami Beach, Florida, Aletsch Glacier, Switzerland; 2006 – Museum Kunst Palast Dusseldorf, Germany, Museum of Contemporary Art, Caracus, Venezuela; 2005 – BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art, Gateshead, UK; 2003 – Grand Central Station, New York. Selected solo exhibitions: 2008 – Vienna’s Kunsthalle, Austria; 2007 – Mexico City Museum, Mexico City, Mexico, i8 Gallery, Reykjavik, Iceland; 2006 – BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art, Gateshead, UK, Museo de Arte Contemporaneo, Caracus, Venezuela, Havana Biennial, Centro de Arte Contemporáneo Wilfredo Lam, Havana, Cuba; 2005 – Lyon Biennale, Lyon, France, Museum of Contemporary Art Cleveland, Cleveland, Ohio; 2003 – Institut de Cultura de Barcelona, Barcelona, Spain. Most recent projects include two installations in Ireland.