Ion Castro (with his clothes on) was there in the interests of art – well, someone’s got to do it
According to Wickipedia, that well-known internetbased fount of usually-correct information a flashmob is a group of people who assemble suddenly in a public place, perform an unusual and seemingly pointless act for a brief time, then quickly disperse, often for the purposes of entertainment, satire, and artistic expression. Flashmobs are organized via telecommunications, social media, or viral emails. In Hastings’ case the flashmob had no clothes on – a flashmob of flashers? About 30 folk turned up and disrobed on a chilly morning in January, almost outnumbered by the media presence!, even the BBC was there and the story went out on the local news at midday with a longer version after the 6 o’clock news that night.
So what was it all about? It turns out that it’s part of an attempt by the Jerwood Gallery to lure American artist Spencer Tunick to Hastings and the Jerwood because, apparently, he’s said that he wants to create one of his ‘human installations’ on England’s South-east coast and Hastings is in comp et i t io n wi th Brighton & Folkestone
Spencer Tunick was born January 1, 1967 and is an American photographer best known for organizing large-scale nude shoots. Since 1994 he has photo graphed over 75 human installations around the world (thanks Wickipedia for the info)
The Jerwood gallery needs all the help it can get; it was given the ground upon which it was built free and exempted from local rates and taxes on the promise of attracting 150,000+ visitors every year and it has failed to achieve even half that, attracting only a total of around 65,000 visits. In order for regeneration to ‘work’ a large numbers of outof- towners, somewhat more than the 25,000 included in the above figure, is essential – it’s these out-of-towners that are vital to our local economy because they bring ‘new’ money into the town and an exhibition by Spencer Tunick might just attract that extra footfall…..
Pictures show tastefully posed participants and an interview by the BBC news crew
From the February 2014
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