Sea of Hull is the title of a photographic installation artwork created by American artist

Spencer Tunick Spencer Tunick is an American photographer best known for organizing large-scale nude shoots. Early life and education Spencer Tunick was born in Middletown, Orange County, New York into a Jewish family, being the fourth generation of photogra ...

Hull Hull may refer to: Structures * The hull of an armored fighting vehicle, housing the chassis * Fuselage, of an aircraft * Hull (botany), the outer covering of seeds * Hull (watercraft), the body or frame of a sea-going craft * Submarine hull Ma ...

, United Kingdom on 9 July 2016. The work was commissioned by the city's

Ferens Art Gallery The Ferens Art Gallery is an art gallery in the English city of Kingston upon Hull. The site and money for the gallery were donated to the city by Thomas Ferens, after whom it is named. The architects were S. N. Cooke and E. C. Dav ...

to mark Hull's status as UK City of Culture 2017. It also sought to bring attention to rising sea levels propelled by

climate change Present-day climate change includes both global warming—the ongoing increase in Global surface temperature, global average temperature—and its wider effects on Earth's climate system. Climate variability and change, Climate change in ...

. The installation featured 3,200 volunteers, each one being naked and body-painted. This made it the largest artwork Tunick had created in the UK, ahead of previous installations at

Gateshead Gateshead () is a town in the Gateshead Metropolitan Borough of Tyne and Wear, England. It is on the River Tyne's southern bank. The town's attractions include the twenty metre tall Angel of the North sculpture on the town's southern outskirts, ...

in 2005 and

Salford Salford ( ) is a City status in the United Kingdom, city in Greater Manchester, England, on the western bank of the River Irwell which forms its boundary with Manchester city centre. Landmarks include the former Salford Town Hall, town hall, ...

in 2010. Volunteers had registered from around 20 countries.

Volunteers

Ferens Art Gallery announced plans for the installation in a call for volunteers on 30 March 2016. It stated an intention to gather "hundreds of naked people", although Tunick later said: "I needed around 2,500 to 3,000 olunteersto do this work and 3,200 came. I was incredibly lucky to be able to fill up streets into the distance." Volunteers had to be aged 18 or older. The call said: "In response to Hull's maritime history, Tunick's participants will wear body paint to reference the colours of the sea found in the Ferens Art Gallery's paintings. Sea of Hull will be presented at the gallery in 2017, during the UK City of Culture year. ..Each participant will receive a limited edition print of the installation as a permanent record of involvement. You will only be naked for a short period of time."

Installation

Volunteers arrived at a meeting point in Queen's Gardens, near the city centre, at 3 am on Saturday 9 July 2016. They were each issued a tub containing one of four different paint colours. At a designated time, they were asked to remove all their clothes and help to paint each other. Using megaphones, Tunick's assistants then ordered the crowds into position for what would be a 3-hour photoshoot. The first photographs were taken at Queen's Gardens Rosebowl, where volunteers formed a giant circle around the flowerbeds to represent water flowing around a ship's wheel. Volunteers then proceeded on foot to a second main location alongside the

Guildhall A guildhall, also known as a guild hall or guild house, is a historical building originally used for tax collecting by municipalities or merchants in Europe, with many surviving today in Great Britain and the Low Countries. These buildings commo ...

in Alfred Gelder Street, with more shots taken along its side in Parliament Street and Manor Street. A third set of photographs was taken at Lowgate. The fourth and final installation of the day was on Scale Lane Bridge. The following day, on Sunday 10 July 2016, a smaller group of volunteers was taken by bus to a field on the south-east side of the

Humber Bridge The Humber Bridge is a single-span road suspension bridge near Kingston upon Hull, East Riding of Yorkshire, England. When it opened to traffic on 24 June 1981, it was the longest of its type in the world; the Akashi Kaikyō Bridge surpassed ...

, where a further installation was created and photographed by Tunick.

Exhibition

Spencer Tunick's Sea of Hull artworks were unveiled at the Ferens Art Gallery, Hull in 2017 as part of an exhibition called 'SKIN'. Volunteers who had participated in the installation were invited to a special viewing at the gallery on Friday 21 April before the exhibition opened to the public on Saturday 22 April 2017. The exhibition included three of Tunick's photographs that had been bought by the gallery. Friends of Ferens Gallery launched a crowd funding bid to buy a fourth. The city council later said the exhibition had contributed to a record number of people visiting Ferens Art Gallery in 2017, with 519,000 visits being highest total in the gallery's 90-year history.

References

{{Kingston upon Hull 2010s photographs 2016 works 2016 in art Nude photography showing men Nude photography showing women Hull City of Culture 2017 Clothing-free events 2010s in the East Riding of Yorkshire