Neo Naturists (8mm film still by John Maybury, circa 1982)
We are delighted to welcome the renowned founding Neo Naturists - sisters Christine and Jennifer Binnie and Wilma Johnson - to the gallery for a joyful and liberating plunge in to their forty plus year archive.
The Neo Naturists are celebrated for their body-painted, ritualistic interventions in public spaces, and performances in nightclubs and galleries from the early 80’s to the present. These events have always been imbued with the signature Neo Naturist sense of freedom, anarchic exuberance and humour, often inviting participation from temporary members (including Grayson Perry and Cerith Wyn Evans amongst many). Having met at St Martins School of Art, Christine and Wilma quickly found themselves engaging in their core practice, only to find Jennifer had been woking in a similar vein at Portsmouth Polytechnic. Their group performances in London’s then-explosive club scene followed soon after, in a direct riposte to the austerity of post-punk, Thatcherite Britain, eschewing any formal drive to enter London’s small but gathering gallery scene.
“A rehearsal would have been a sellout.” Dr Andrew Wilson, Art historian.
We will be installing a series of rare 8mm films from the early 80’s by and on the Neo Naturists, and premiering a 20 minute club performance-based montage from 1982 by John Maybury (Love Is The Devil, 1998). We will also be presenting paintings by founders Jennifer Binnie (a selection of whose historic paintings were recently shown at Richard Saltoun Gallery in Mayfair), and Wilma Johnson, with an important, large ceramic work by Christine Binnie.
In addition we will install photographic documentation of actions and performances, body prints on paper and a commissioned wall-based work.
Neo Naturist Archive materials are also currently on show as part of Women In Revolt, curated by Linsey Young, which has travelled from Tate Britain via the National Galleries of Scotland and on to the Whitworth Gallery, Manchester.
With thanks to the British Film Institute, John Maybury and Richard Saltoun Gallery.
The Neo Naturist Archive brings together a collection of press cuttings, photos, photocopies, slides, stories, notebooks, artefacts and films (held by the BFI). The aim of the collection has been to hold together the various threads and documents linking the often-intangible performative work of the Neo Naturists. Christine Binnie started the chronological collecting and cataloguing of the objects and stories in 2009. It is an ongoing project.
Recently, films and items from the archive were also shown in Radical Landscapes at Tate Liverpool 2022 (travelling to William Morris Gallery Walthamstow 2024) and ReSisters at Barbican 2023/24.
Christine Binnie’s recent lecture on the Neo Naturist Archive to the Radical Anthropology Group at University College, Lonodn, can be accessed here.