In summer I walk around my own home without much on. Or with nothing on. We have fans instead of airconditioning and for that time, I feel completely unselfconscious. I am old and getting older, but for these moments, my drooping breasts and dimpled thighs and stretch marks, my tattoos of motherhood, are free from scrutiny. I'm free.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
or signup to continue reading
It was not possible to do this when our children lived at home because they were uncomfortable, although not so uncomfortable that they avoided nude beaches as adults. Context is everything, and if the context is your ageing mother, then it can't be any fun. Alas, the enjoyment you can extract from the embarrassment of your children is fleeting.
Last Friday, I discovered exactly how they felt. And then I discovered how liberating it was to move past that squirming sense of discomfort.
Public, shared, consensual nudity is one of the great sports of adult life. It's a time to stare and to be stared at; or a time to pretend that the hair growing out of your nearest neighbour's right earlobe is the most fascinating thing you've ever seen.
When the Sydney Festival advertised tickets to nude contemporary dance in and around the Art Gallery of NSW's Nude: Art from the Tate Collection, I booked as soon as tickets became available. There were also tickets to a couple of shows where the audience was also unclothed. If I booked for that, I knew I'd be going alone.
In 2010, when US photographer Spencer Tunick asked 5000 Sydneysiders to lie naked on the steps of the Sydney Opera House, not one member of my family would come with me. I begged. "Tunick's a great artist ... did you see the great thing he did with the glacier?", and "c'mon, guys, humour me". Not one said yes. The replies varied from, "I don't mind if you embarrass yourself but please don't bring me down with you", to "no and don't ask again".
My experience of lying naked on the stairs of the Opera House (that's me, third from the right) was mainly memorable for how chilly it was. And how quickly I could run back to the place where I'd left my pile of clothes.
But at the Art Gallery of NSW this time, no audience involvement in a physical sense, just me wielding my womanly gaze, just an opportunity to do what I always do in galleries: stare. There are small and short performances in most of the rooms, some hilarious, some quite moving, and all absolutely impressive in their athleticism. I had no idea that anyone could lean backwards in the same way you can lean forwards; and I've never been near anyone who can put their heel on their heads.
This review by Jill Sykes will give you an appreciation of the work as art – but there's something much more. About three-quarters of the way through I took a seat to watch one of the many performances, and as the music faded, I felt someone sit next to me, a young dancer with no clothes on. My husband is next to me and on his other side is a young dancer with no clothes on. We have been gently ambushed into audience participation.
When I ask professor of gender studies at the University of Sydney Elspeth Probyn why I felt so awkward, she said, "You were turned into sights".
She was right.
At that moment, I had so many feelings all rushing in at once. Should we get up and move and give the dancers room? I'm flooded with shyness and briefly hope I can tap into that feeling again when I run out of empathy with those who feel shy all the time. I regret my bad posture and try to straighten my shoulders imperceptibly; and fail. I come skin-to-skin with youth and undamaged beauty.
What did the late John Berger say in Ways of Seeing? "A woman's presence expresses her own attitude to herself, and defines what can and cannot be done to her. Her presence is manifest in her gestures, voice, opinions, expressions, clothes, chosen surroundings, taste – indeed there is nothing she can do which does not contribute to her presence."
Did I ever – ever – look like this boundless woman next to me? Or maybe the one who has curled up under our bench? I can feel their power and their energy just pouring into me but I also start to feel quite heady.
For a moment, I am old and wrinkled and bent-over. I stare at the perfect skin of the dancers and am wondering why they have tattoos. I am in the orbit of these lambent women and men. And then I notice the audience who are all looking at me as much as they are looking at the dancers.
My husband whispers to me accusingly, "Did you plan this?" And I think I see a little tiny smile from the young woman whose body is otherwise made from Fimo.
But no, this is unplanned. At least by me. We are caught by these glorious dancers into being naked with our clothes on. By Kenneth Clark's definition, if you have no clothes on for the sake of art, you are nude. If you are "deprived of clothes", you are naked.
And I feel, though dressed, utterly naked, or maybe nude. Berger was right on this. "A naked body has to be seen as an object in order to become nude … nakedness reveals itself. Nudity is placed on display."
We are in the spotlight for what seems like forever and is less than three minutes. But in that time, I move from crushing embarrassment to pleasure then to freedom.
Afterwards, others in the audience come up to me and grasp my shoulder, or congratulate us, or laugh, as if we'd achieved something. We had.
