Strip-off Ireland at Blarney Castle

MORE than 1,100 people yesterday bared all in a frozen June dawn to take part in a nude installation by American artist Spencer Tunick at Blarney Castle.

The installation called for volunteers to be photographed naked at several locations on the Blarney Castle estate over a period of several hours. Participants arrived at 3am and the shoot began at around 5am. It concluded around 9am with Tunick photographing the last 50 volunteers kissing the Blarney Stone.

“Most people came from Cork or the Munster area,” Cork Midsummer Festival director William Galinsky said, “though some came from further afield.”

“Usually, when Spencer does an installation in a particular city, about one in a thousand people sign up for it; in Cork, it was more like one in a hundred.

“Spencer was really pleased with how smoothly everything went,” says Galinsky.

“We were blessed with the weather, and the atmosphere among the participants was great. We were really privileged that Charles Colthust and the Blarney Estate were so supportive; they really went the extra mile in helping us with everything.”

The first shoot involved all the participants standing on the lawns within view of Blarney Castle; first they faced away from it towards the camera, then they turned around and faced the other way. They also turned and bent over so the photographer could capture their backs.

The second shoot involved the volunteers holding roses aloft as Tunick photographed them, again within view of the castle, though at a different location. The men held white roses, the women red. First they were photographed standing, then on their backs in the grass.

The third shoot involved the artist photographing 400 women in the rockery by the castle. For the fourth set-up, he persuaded 100 male volunteers to stand in a river with coins spread on the upturned palms of their hands. Then he had them sit in the water up to their haunches.

For the final set-up, the artist had 50 volunteers pose naked on the top of Blarney Castle to kiss the famous stone in the altogether, something that even past famous stone kissers like Winston Churchill never managed.

“It was freezing,” said one bare-butt kisser, a 22-year-old student at University College Cork.

She and her three fellow students decided this was a chance not to be missed.

“We wanted to go down in history as the only naked kissers of the Blarney Stone. We had to lie down naked, lean back and kiss the cold stone. I was freezing from top to bottom.”

She added cheekily: “With the gift of the gab, that means we will be talking out of our backsides from now on.”

Cork Midsummer Festival said it was the biggest participatory artwork Ireland has ever seen.

While Tunick will also have a second installation in the Dublin Docklands on Saturday, he has not yet finished in Cork. “Spencer invited between 150 and 200 people along for another secret shoot at dawn on Wednesday morning at the White Street Car Park in the city centre,” says Galinsky. “The volunteers will again be photographed naked.”