The People of Inside Australia

Photograph © Ashley de Prazer

In June 2002, Antony Gormley set up a body scanner in the Menzies Town Hall.

It had come all the way from California, and was on its way to the Fox Studios in Sydney. It was one of those incredibly expensive high-tech devices that Hollywood was using to scan (or map) the human body for use in animation and other special effects.

While a sign near the entrance of the Menzies Hotel states that its minimum dress standard is “shirt, shorts & thongs”, getting the residents of Menzies to lower this standard in the name of art was a challenge. Gormley was wanting the good citizens to strip off and present their nakedness for scanning in the Tardis-like booth. Ultimately, over 50 individuals took up the challenge, mostly locals but also some out-of-towners.

Today, they are ‘immortalised’ on the surface of Lake Ballard. They have become Gormley’s ‘Insiders’. They are, in alphabetical order:

*Sadly, some of the people scanned by Gomley in 2002 are no longer living.