A NEW website is set to lay bare Irish art -- quite literally.

The website will be the first to display the works of American photo artist Spencer Tunick, who specialises in producing photographs of naked volunteers gathered in large groups in public places.

And Tunick's Irish endeavours are set to be among those which will be displayed to the world online.

One such picture where 1,000 Cork volunteers posed lying naked along the slopes in front of Blarney Castle is part of the web collection.

The Tunick-dedicated website has been commissioned by the Cork Midsummer Festival and the Dublin Docklands' Development Authority and will feature a selection of photographic images from Cork and Dublin as well as video works created by the artist.

It will go live for four months from June 8 at a web address to be announced the week before.

"This is the first time Tunick's work will be available exclusively through a website," says William Galinsky, the artistic director of the Cork Midsummer Festival.

"We looked at different ways of showing his photographs and settled on this as a way that gives ownership to the participants and is as democratic as the installations themselves were.

"Anyone can go online, anywhere in this country and beyond and see the photographs rather than having to travel to Dublin or Cork to do so."

Punch

In the same week that the website goes live, the Docklands Authority will post limited edition photographs for the Dublin installations to all those who participated.

In Cork the participants will be invited to pick up their photographs at the Cork Midsummer Festival Box Office, based at the Triskel Arts Centre on Tobin Street.

The Blarney Castle photograph was taken on June 17 last when the artists was a guest of the Midsummer Festival.

The following morning Tunick photographed a smaller group of female volunteers in a Cork city car park before taking pictures of several hundred more participants at two locations in Dublin for the Docklands Authority.

"The project was a one-off but it has been brilliant for us," says Mr Galinsky.

"It's given us a much bigger punch at international level. We're now recognised as a serious -- but fun -- international arts festival."

csheehy@herald.ie

- Clodagh Sheehy