Tank top for voyeurism as Tate shows naked ambition

The 98ft-wide tanks, which contained oil before they were decommissioned in 1981, will become the world’s first museum galleries permanently dedicated to live art, performance, installation and film.

Eddie Peake’s work will go on show as part of a 15-week festival at the London gallery, which kicks off on July 18, to coincide with the Olympics.

The space will also put on a two-week event for young people featuring psychics, underground music DJs and audience participation work using Twitter, Facebook and text messaging.

Earlier this year Peake asked a group of men to play “a serious game of football” wearing nothing but socks and football boots.

Tate Modern curator Kathy Noble said: “The football piece was very joyful. After a while the men became sculptures and you stopped thinking about their nakedness. Eddie’s work is about the worship of the male body, and asks ‘why do you want to look at this?’”

She said his new work was likely to feature a large number of men, possibly in the nude.

The tanks are the first part of a £215m project which will culminate in the opening of a new, adjoining gallery by December 2016.

Over 75 per cent of the total costs have been raised by Tate Modern, a former power station, so far.

The opening tanks programme will include a new installation by video and performance artist Sung Hwan Kim while Belgian choreographer Anne Teresa de Keersmaeker will recreate her 1982 piece Fase: Four Movements to the Music of Steve Reich.