Nude art landed these French performers in an Adelaide prison. Three decades later, they tried again

Australia Broadcast Center

26-06-2025

Naked and brightly coloured, last time Ilotopie came to Adelaide they were locked up. ( ABC Arts: Eloise Fuss )
Naked, brightly painted figures meander through the Adelaide Botanic Gardens during the annual WOMADelaide festival.
It's an oven-like 37 degrees, and the figures are sticky and wet, their skin glistening.
They appear nonchalant despite the heat — though the sensation seems surely uncomfortable.
Adelaide artist John likens the feeling of being covered in paint to having "snotty ink all over your body".
It's like "being covered in the thickest sweat in every crevice of my body", another Adelaide artist, Daria, says.
"Like being licked by the monster with the stickiest saliva."
Daria is performing for the first time with French artists Ilotopie, pioneers of street theatre and pros at performing in wet paint.
"My colour was blue, and so absorbent of heat that my head felt like an oven," they say.
Daria, who has 60 tattoos, says being painted from head to toe was to see "my body completely transformed".
Ilotopie invited some local Australian artists to join in their final-day WOMAD performance. ( Image: Samuel Graves )
But these local participants are taking it in their multicoloured stride.
It's a rare chance to join the famed French company.
For decades, Ilotopie has performed Les Gens de Couleur (People of Colour) around the world — turning bodies into vibrant, living sculptures that create surreal, imaginative scenes in everyday spaces.
Artistic director Bruno Schnebelin, who has been doing street performance for 50 years, describes the work as a performance "in the middle of the audience".
Among spontaneously forming crowds, "we just exist", he says.
An Ilotopie performer casually poses under a tree at WOMADelaide. ( Image: Samuel Graves )
Curious children dart playfully around the figures.
Smiling adults hold up their phones.
The audience is ready and receptive to the striking nude presence.
But 33 years ago, when Ilotopie last performed this same work in the centre of Adelaide, in 1992, the reception was very different.
It led to arrests, a furious arts minister, protests about public-nudity laws and public outrage.
Schnebelin was there then, too.
"It's a good story," he says, smirking.
Wrong kind of drama
WOMADelaide director Ian Scobie was general manager at the Adelaide Festival in 1992.
He never imagined bailing artists out of jail being part of the gig.
And yet ...
On March 10 of that year, as part of the festival, two Ilotopie performers stepped onto North Terrace, in the heart of Adelaide city, naked and painted.
Drama, and not the artistic type, ensued.
"I was stunned and embarrassed that such a parochial thing could happen," Scobie says, recalling the scandal that followed.
Media reports say police received two complaints about the topless performers and, under public-decency laws, arrested the artists on the street, mid-performance.
"Police officers intervened, arguing that they had received a complaint, which was never clarified … There was a stage manager saying, 'No, no, no, this is part of the Adelaide Festival,' and they wouldn't hear anything," Scobie says.
Schnebelin escaped arrest because not all the troupe was painted up and performing at the time. But he recounts how police "really strongly" arrested his colleagues — he says one artist even had their teeth broken.
"It was a very brutal approach — and careless," Scobie says.
"It was obvious this was a performance. Festival staff tried to intervene … but the SAPOL [South Australia Police] individuals had made up their mind to assert themselves, and the rest, as they say, is history."
Front page of The Advertiser, March 11, 1992. ( Supplied )
French performer Myriam Prijent (painted red) was charged with offensive behaviour.
Fellow artist Raymond Blard (coated green) was charged with hindering police, resisting arrest and property damage — due to his green paint coming off on an officer's clothes.
Like a scene from a dark comedy, the performers remained naked and slippery with paint, "sliding around the van" on the way to the police station, Scobie says.
"Police added to their complaints that they [Prijent and Blard] caused damage to the police vehicle because of the paint.
"They damaged the police uniform because, when they went to restrain them, they were covered in paint, so it got on the officer's clothes.
"You couldn't write about it, really, could you?"
When Scobie got the call about the arrests, he had to personally go to the "lock-up", the city watch house, cash in hand, to bail out the international artists.
"I had to … formally pay bail to have them discharged.
"And of course, they were dressed in colour, nothing else … they weren't treated very well."
While the complaint to police wasn't followed up, the incident led then-arts minister Diana Laidlaw to push for legislation change so that something like this couldn't happen again.
A clipping from Adelaide newspaper The News, March 11, 1992. ( Supplied )
"The legislation, which was a particular clause under which the police arrested the artists, related to a woman's breasts being bare in the city," Scobie explains.
"And so, thanks to Ilotopie, that law was removed in 1992 … and the government apologised to the company and to the French ambassador.
Front page of The Advertiser, March 1992. ( Supplied )
"It was a big scandal and an embarrassment for the city," Scobie says.
"It is an amazing story; you wouldn't believe it."
WOMADelaide director Ian Scobie reunites with Schnebelin, who was in Adelaide with Ilotopie for their 1992 performance. ( ABC Arts: Eloise Fuss )
The invitation to perform at WOMADelaide marks Ilotopie's first return to Adelaide since that event more than 30 years ago.
Scobie insists that bringing them back wasn't an act of redemption; simply, it's "still an amazing show".
"The curiosity and the performance … it's reflecting how we are as human beings."
During performances Ilotopie members humorously gravitate to objects that share their own paint hue. ( Image: Samuel Graves )
Without any speech or explanation, Ilotopie performs a scene of publicly washing paint off performers' bodies. ( Image: Samuel Graves )
And so, more than three decades on from the 1992 arrests, Ilotopie artists are back in Adelaide.
In a white tent backstage, Ilotopie's general manager Julien Bonelli maps out today's route with a WOMAD organiser — a general framework of where their meandering performance will start and end.
Pre-performance, Ilotopie General Manager Julien Bonelli goes through the day's WOMAD performance route with an event employee. ( ABC Arts: Eloise Fuss )
Viewing a map of the WOMADelaide festival grounds. ( ABC Arts: Eloise Fuss )
Fingers dip into colourful tubs labelled in French as the group's seven artists coat themselves in a gloopy mixture of glycerine and natural pigment.
"Every day we change colours," Bonelli explains. "We are proud to wear [these] colours."
For Bonelli, the different colours represent diversity, and its power to "make the world great".
"It's a really great sensation … we are totally nude but when you've coloured yourself, it's like you wear something, and it doesn't matter what the people think," Bonelli says. ( ABC Arts: Eloise Fuss )
Performing over four days, the team's work on the day ABC Arts follows them is slightly different from three decades ago and from the rest of the 2025 performance — they're exchanging an array of colours for a uniform pink.
Artists lather paint all over their bodies, preparing for their all-pink performance. ( ABC Arts: Eloise Fuss )
Ilotopie performers become expert at quickly applying the paint to their whole body. ( ABC Arts: Eloise Fuss )
It's just shoes and g-strings that are worn by the performers — in hues that match the colour they are painted. ( ABC Arts: Eloise Fuss )
While the multi-coloured performances celebrate diversity, the all-pink performance is designed to raise questions about what happens when diversity isn't embraced.
"Maybe society at the moment [is too focused on] uniformity," Bonelli says.
He says Ilotopie performers want to "question the audience"; to prompt them to be curious.
For most of the performance, performers roam around — curious, calm and playful.
The paint remains sticky and wet on the body during the performance. ( ABC Arts: Eloise Fuss )
An Ilotopie performer swaggers among festival-goers. ( ABC Arts: Eloise Fuss )
The French artists move through spaces without speaking, sparking all sorts of curious responses from festival-goers. ( ABC Arts: Eloise Fuss )
The troupe aims to spread joy and encourage acceptance of differences through their performances. ( ABC Arts: Eloise Fuss )
But once they reach the far end of the park, Schnebelen, painted in white, gathers the group and loads them into an encaged trailer — looking forlorn as they drive away.
"It's just [an] image," he says, rather than an "act of politique".
"We don't want to be political. It's not our goal.
"We just like to interact in daily life of the people; we don't have any answer, we don't get the truth. We just want to question people.
"If people start questioning, it's a good beginning."
Ilotopie performers are loaded into a trailer without explanation — designed to spark questions about possible meanings. ( Image: Samuel Graves )
The work brings to mind Mike Parr's idea about Russian artist Kasimir Malevich's famous Black Square painting — a blank canvas, it allows the audience to fill it with their own meaning.
Here, the trailer sparks all sorts of conversations among the crowd. One attendee muses, "I'm wondering if it's a statement about othering, that they are encaged."
Her sister observes, "They looked like pigs, and it was about not eating animals and caging animals."
Another festival goer, holding up their phone and filming, says in the work's wake: "I thought it might have been something about refugees, like being taken away somewhere.
"I don't know what it's about, but it makes you think, doesn't it?"
Another observer shows me a picture on her phone of her with a performer, taken during yesterday's technicolour and collarless performance.
"Absolutely fantastic," she gushes. "The colour of them and bravery with the body. They don't care what their body looks like. I wish I could do that."
A long-time WOMAD attendee shows off her picture taken with a performer, gushing about the performance. ( ABC Arts: Eloise Fuss )
Schnebelen, who has spent 50 years performing in 65 countries, says taking art out of the theatre or gallery and into the streets is "the best".
He says in France there is a lot of art, but only a small percentage of the population engages with it.
"So, when you're in the street, you catch the daily life of the people, everybody can see you.
"We're [all] the same, just normal people," Schnebelen says.
Ian Scobie adds: "It starts a conversation, makes people think, and the human form is a beautiful thing."
Ilotopie performers move through the Adelaide Botanic Garden, the site of WOMADelaide. ( Image: Samuel Graves )
Free the nipple?
Ilotopie performed in Adelaide this time without any arrests.
Does that mean society's views on women's breasts and nipples being publicly exposed have changed?
Daria, a local artist who painted up and performed, says it's not that simple.
When they learnt about the group's former arrests, the story resonated.
"I hadn't heard until the induction on Friday, and I felt really drawn to that as someone who doesn't have breasts or nipples because I had gender-affirming top surgery," they say.
Daria in blue, together with fellow local artist John (red) and Ilotopie general manager Julien Bonelli (green). ( ABC Arts: Eloise Fuss )
In their own experience, women's nipples in particular remain a very loaded body part.
"[That] I don't have nipples really spins people out when they hear it," Daria says.
"I thought about the women who aren't allowed to show their breasts in public. These body parts get defined either by their functional use or are sexualised … it's just a part of the body, but it is heavily gendered.
"Being reduced to a problematic body part forces you to ask: Why is it a problem? Why is it confronting? It just shows where society's still at with that conversation."
For Daria, participating in this work is a chance to educate the public on trans bodies and identity.
Daria's tattoos begin to reappear as they wash off the blue paint. ( ABC Arts: Eloise Fuss )
"I'm so used to being reduced to my body for identity.
"But it's an important conversation — why does the breast matter?
"Why do our bodies matter?"
"It's a beautiful practice, bearing it all before a huge crowd at WOMAD," Daria says. Performing "felt really liberating and lovely".
Fellow participant John also enjoyed the experience.
"It was great for me — walking around and seeing people's bewilderment and joy. So many were smiling and curious; yes, some were a bit afraid or confused, but the overall feeling was one of pure joy."
Ilotopie performers finish their final 2025 performance in Adelaide — without arrests this time. ( Image: Samuel Graves )
Credits:
Reporting and photography: Eloise Fuss
Additional photography: Samuel Graves
Digital production: Eloise Fuss and Anna Kelsey-Sugg
Editing: Anna Kelsey-Sugg