The National Gallery of Australia has announced that, starting in April, it will introduce naked tours as part of a collaboration with Melbourne-based artist Stuart Ringholt.

The NGA says the ‘naked element’ will remove all barriers between artist and audience. the hour-long tours will happen outside of exhibition hours.

"It seems absurd to bring a bunch of beautifully-dressed people into the gallery when we can bring in a bunch of nude people," said Ringholt, who has previously led nude gallery tours at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Sydney and MONA in Tasmania.

"We seem to forget the nude is really important to art history. The museum in itself is reductive – we have the idea of the white cube but why have we then reduced the viewer through their clothing?"

The James Turrell: A Retrospective naked tours are open to over-18s only on both 1 April and 2 April, with a maximum of 50 participants per session.