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Shopping in the nude
27/04/2003 21:28 - (SA)
London - An American artist led 500 naked people through a leading London department store on Sunday for his latest nudity-inspired live art installation.
At the direction of Spencer Tunick, the volunteers trooped through Selfridge's on London's famous Oxford Street, travelling up and down the escalators and posing at a selection of the store's departments.
To save the blushes of the shopping public, the event took place before Selfridge's opened its doors for the day.
The work - entitled "Be Consumed" - is the second piece involving mass nudity staged by Tunick in London this month.
On April 15, 200 naked people posed in formation on a chilly pavement in south London to mark the opening of a new modern art gallery established by advertising tycoon Charles Saatchi.
They were then invited to mingle with the glitterati at the gallery's opening party - but only if they remained unclothed.
New York-based Tunick has been documenting the live nude figure in public for more than 10 years, and usually works outdoors.
On Sunday he said that outdoor nudity "created tension and vulnerability in the body that comes up against the concrete world."
"That tension creates a desire to be nude in a public place outside," he told BBC television.
"I'm just happy that people wanted to engage in indoor space," he added.
- AFX
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South Africa
