Public Involvement II

Spencer Tunick and Gillian Wearing are two more artists who use public involvement but they use it very differently.
Gillian Wearing went down an everyday street and asked the passerby's to write down how they were feeling on a piece of paper and hold it up for her so she could take a picture of them with it. She entitled this work "Trauma". The most well known picture from this collection is a man in a suit holding a piece of paper that reads "I'm Desperate." I did not understand what this meant at first as to what is he so desperate for? I finally realized what this picture meant when I searched further for another picture from her collection and found another man holding a sign that said "Will Britain Get Through This Recession?"

Spencer Tunick using public involvement in a very different way. He poses the volunteers naked in various places. They have even posed in the freezing cold. When I saw one of the pictures he had taken my mind went to an optical illusion book in which it looks like there are sheep grazing in a meadow but if you look closer, you can see that what you are looking at is actually a picture of naked people. Tunick's art is definitely an acquired taste but for those who participate in the works get the satisfaction of being in a work of art forever.