The Irish public showed him theirs. But now he won’t show us his. Spencer Tunick, the American artist who photographed thousands of nudes in Dublin and Cork as part of an art installation last year, is refusing to exhibit his pictures in Ireland.

The artist was scheduled to reveal images from the naked photo shoots in Dublin this spring but has refused to do so after the Dublin Docklands Development Authority (DDDA) asked him to stage an exhibition in the CHQ building in the Irish Financial Services Centre.

Tunick is understood to have declined the invitation, saying that he would rather exhibit his creations in the National Gallery or Irish Museum of Modern Art. But neither gallery has a slot available to host an exhibition by the controversial American artist in the coming months.

The DDDA has now asked the artist to display his Irish images online so that the general public can view his naked mosaics, but last week said it was still “finalising plans” to allow the Irish public to view them. William Galinsky, director of the Cork Midsummer Festival, said that an announcement would be made shortly.

Almost 1,200 volunteers participated in a nude photoshoot at Blarney Castle in Co Cork last June, while just over 100 people took part in a smaller shoot at White Street car park in Cork city. Days later more than 2,500 took part in another installation at South Wall in Dublin’s docklands. Another 144 participants took part in another smaller installation on the balconies of the Alto Vetro Building at Grand Canal Dock later that day.

Those who took part were told that Tunick’s images would be displayed in Dublin in summer 2009. The artist’s naked models were also promised a limited edition print of one of his images for taking part. Last week the DDDA confirmed volunteers would still receive a limited edition photograph to mark the event. These will be distributed in June.

Tunick has been documenting the live nude figure in public since 1992 and has hosted installations in the US, Argentina, Mexico, Brazil, Belgium, Portugal, Britain, France, Spain, Austria and Holland. In 2007, 18,000 people posed for one of the artist’s creations in Mexico City.

Tunick only ever exhibits a small selection of his nude tableaux. He has previously held shows in the Hilger Contemporary in Vienna, Austria; the Hales gallery

in London; the Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art in Gateshead, England; and the I-20 gallery in New York.

Participants in the Irish projects, including Ray D’Arcy, a Today FM presenter, described the experience as “liberating”, even “life-changing”. Volunteers at the Dublin photo shoot were required to be at Dublin’s South Wall at 3am. The event lasted almost four hours, although those taking part were only naked for 45 minutes. Some cut short their participation when it began to rain shortly after 6am.

Tom Lawlor, a photographer who took part in the Dublin exhibition, said he was disappointed that Tunick’s images would not be on public display. “He took the pictures but the public made the art,” he said. “It was very much a collaborative effort.”

Lawlor said that he felt that CHQ would be an ideal venue for an exhibition. “Why should the images only be exhibited in the rarefied confines of an art gallery? After all, it was a populist project made possible by volunteers,” he said.

Tunick has been arrested a number of times while creating his artworks. Rudy Giuliani, the former mayor of New York, said his work was offensive and invasive, while in Chile his human landscapes were described as pornographic.

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