Thousands of People to Get Naked in Mass Photo Shoot in Australia (PHOTOS)

Some 11,000 people will participate in a mass nude photoshoot by New York artist Spencer Tunick in Australia, after the local shopping mall Woolworths agreed for the photoshoot to take place on the roof of its Melbourne department.

Initially, Woolworths refused to provide its premises for the controversial photo, fearing that several thousands volunteers and the event itself will disrupt the mall's usually busy Saturday shopping session.

The photoshoot was scheduled on a weekend in order to promote the Provocare Festival of the Arts, and the organizers had to shift the entire schedule from weekend to Monday morning of July 9, which is usually a dead time at Woolworths, and the supermarket eventually agreed.

"We're over the moon," John Lotton, director of the Provocare Festival of the Arts, told Reuters Saturday.

"It's a good outcome," a Woolworths representative said in a email statement.

​According to Lotton, some 11,000 people registered to participate in the photoshoot as models. The exact nature of the upcoming work, entitled "Return of the Nude," is being kept in secret, but the organizers encourage participants of all ages, race, gender, ability and body shape to take part.

​Spencer Tunick made mass nude photos all over the world, from Bogota to Vienna. One of his most famous works, taken back in 2007, involved a modest number of some 100 volunteers, but has been taken in Swiss Alps and was actually requested by Greenpeace to draw public attention to global warming.

​Tunick has been detained at least five times in various corners of the world as the authorities claimed his installations violate public decency.