neonaturists

The neo-Naturist Cabaret was started in 1979 by Wilma Johnson, Christine and Jennifer Binnie and Grayson Perry. Over the years over 70 people have participated in performances in galleries, night clubs, public places and festivals. Wilma left the group in 1987.

The Beginning
I first met Christine Binnie when she came to be my “personal life model” when I was at St. Martins college of art. Most of the models were straight out of a Stanley Spencer painting, all goose skin and Bingo wings, the grim reaper lurking behind the gas heater.
Christine was wearing a pale blue negligée, fuck me pumps and holly red lipstick. She had a peroxide beehive hairdo with a tourquoise streak through the middle. She looked fantastic.
I drew her for a bit in the morning, because that’s what I thought I was supposed to do, but by lunchtime we were both a bit bored. Then we went to Soho Square for a picnic, and over a tub of rollmops and a can of cider, we had a chat about performance art. By the afternoon, I had swapped my Flesh Tint oil paint for some blue and gold body paint and transformed her into a voluptuous version of Tutankhamen’s sarcophagus, with the help of a feather boa I happened to be wearing. That was the beginning of the neo-Naturists for me.
The Middle
We performed all over the place, clubs, galleries, theatres, festivals, the Spanish Anarchist centre. When we didn’t have a venue, we’d think of one.…..
“Shall we go flashing in the British Museum?“
“Shall we go and swim in the fountains at Centrepoint and see how long it takes to get arrested?”
Of course we were always the first to jump into the swimming pool naked at a party, which people usually appreciated more if we weren’t wearing bodypaint or seafood.
We were so convinced of our right to bare arms, legs and everything in between that it sometimes caught us by surprise when people reacted badly.
I remember our righteous indignation when we were asked to leave a party. The hostess was a student at the Royal college, so surely she should have been familiar with the idea of nudity as an art form, but apparently not.….
“What’s the matter?”
“Firstly, you weren’t invited. Secondly, you aren’t wearing anything.”
“Yes we are ….. we’re wearing cherries!”
We had another party to go to, so we left without a fight. We walked down the street with bunches of fresh cherries sellotaped to our bodies in a random pattern, like a pretty summer print, and our floor length fur coats sweeping the dust.
We got so used to ourselves, I don’t think we realised how strange we looked.
The Dream
I lay on the stage of the Royal opera House, waiting for the curtains to open, the moment I had been waiting for since I was a little girl who dreamt of being a ballerina.
I was completely naked, and I’d given up ballet classes when I was nine.…...
The neo-Naturists used to have a recurring nightmare …… we’d be on stage and we’d have forgotten to take our clothes off. Everyone else would be in gold paint and sequins, and we’d be standing there in horrible old jeans and a vest from What She Wants. I’d wake up in a cold sweat.
So when I found myself in the classic anxiety nightmare - on stage , naked , and I can’t dance- it wasn’t a nightmare at all. It was my dream come true.
When I was a kid, I wanted to be a ballerina. My grandfather used to take me to the Opera House as a christmas treat. It was my favourite day of the year, we sat in the Royal box and got to use the same toilet as the queen, which added to the sense of occasion.
One year we saw Margot Fonteyn doing the dance of the dying swan, her pale fleshless body swirling across the stage in a blur of white net and feathers. As she took her twenty five curtain calls, she waved up at us, surrounded by bouquets of red roses thrown by her adoring fans. They were shouting themselves hoarse, “Brava! Brava!” and openly weeping at the beauty of her performance.……..
I swore to myself that one day I would be up there on that stage.
My moment in the spotlight finally came thanks to Michael Clark, my all time favourite man in tights, up there with Errol Flynn. He’d asked us to perform with him in a charity Gala, along with a few other unrequited prima donnas like Leigh Bowery.
Christine had just come back from America with some cheerleading kits, so that was our theme. We weren’t typical cheerleaders, in fact we’d probably have been the last girls in the school to be picked. But we were picking our own team that night.
The curtains opened and we were woken from a deep and dreamless sleep by the Fairy Godmother.
We jumped up in our red, white and blue bodypaint miniskirts, and swirled our pom-poms chanting,“NNnnng nnnnnnngowa!We got the power!We are the best!Sock ‘em in the chest
Watcha gonna do??????The Yankee Boogaloo!!!!”
The curtain closed to a stunned silence. A deafening silence I think they call it in the theatre world. No bouquets of red roses. No fans screaming ”Brava!”, although some of the audience may have been in tears. Disappointingly I was never asked back for the Swan Lake role.
We felt the night had gone pretty much according to plan, but I was quite relieved that it was only the Princess Margaret in the royal box, not my grandfather.
We were rewarded with spectacularly awful reviews. Maybe we hadn’t put in enough years of barre work and anorexia for some people. Even Country Life, not usually known for it’s use of strong language, described us as “horrid.”
The End
I left the neo-naturists in 1987 when I ran away to Mexico. It was meant to be a holiday, but I decided not to come home. I stayed for a year, painting, salsa dancing and drinking mescal, following any fiesta from Mardi Gras to the night of the radish. One day on a bus in the sierra madre, I tried to remember what it was about, but I couldn’t. As if I was losing my religion in the desert on the road to Oaxaca. Maybe I’d changed too much, maybe I was just too hot and bothered on the bus to imagine putting on bodypaint.…….
I didn’t see any of the films or photos until twenty years later, at the private view of the “Secret Public- Last Days of the British Underground” exhibition at the ICA. In the meantime I had lived for ten years in an Irish fishing village, had three children, done a lot of painting, got married, got divorced, moved to Biarritz and become a surfer.
I walked in and saw an amazing photo of a woman standing on the beach at Wapping, covered in smeary black stripes, like a member of some lost tribe rediscovered by the National Geographic magazine. Underneath was written “Do you remember the neo-Naturists?”
I took me about a minute to realise that it was me, and I thought it was pretty funny that I had almost forgotten myself.
©Wilma Johnson 2007

www.neonaturists.org.uk/

Selected Performances;

1980. Flashing in the British Museum.

1980. Le Beatroute. Swiss Misses.

1980-84. Sexist Crabs.Riverside Studios, Wapping Beach, Oxford University and other venues.

!980-82. Christmas trees, Easter Crucified Chicken Performance, Halloween Bonefire, Gardening for Spring. Fridge Club, Brixton.

1981. Sheherezade, written by Hermine Demoriane, co-directed by Christine Binnie. Notre Dame Hall, Leicester Square.

1981. Andrew Logan's Alternative Miss World at Olympia. Miss Windsurfer (Wilma) Miss Easy Rider (Jennifer) and Miss

Binnie (Christine).

1981 & 1982. St. Martin's College of Art Alternative Fashion Show. Psychedelia and Lederhosen.

1981. Wilma crowned Miss St. Martin's as Miss Fish in mermaid tail.

1982.Week long live-in performance at David Dawson's B2 Gallery in Wapping, with 17 neo-Naturists including;

Macbeth Day, with 5 minute MacBeth, Fashion Day, Art Day, Black Rapport Day on the beach of River Thames, and

Punk Day. Participants included Derek Jarman, John Maybury, Bruce Lacey, Helen Terry, Duggie Fields.

1982. Faerie Fair in Norfolk. Coloured porridge performance.

1982. Mayday Performance at Spanish Anarchist Centre.

1983. Portland Sculpture park in Dorset, rock painting with Andrew Logan's Cosmic Egg.

1983.Sexist Crabs with Michael Clark at Riverside studios.

1983. One Minute Ballet with Michael Clark at Riverside Studios.

1984. Fountains at Centrepoint. Swimming and walking down Charing Cross road experiment.

1984. Diorama. Derek Jarman's book launched into paddling pool.

1984. Valentine's Day at Wedgies Club in King's road.

1985. Flambé your brassiere. London Fashion Week at Chelsea Barracks, Parachute catwalk show wiht coloured porridge.

1986. Andrew Logan's Alternative Miss World at Brixton Academy. Miss Born Again (pictured above) Wilma's last performance.

Other venues include: Almeida Theatre, James Birch Gallery, Heaven, Taboo, Architects Association.

Neo-naturist films include: Tribal Rites of the Iceni (1979) Private view in the Snow (1981) and The neo-Naturist Epic (Unfinished) (1982-1984)

TV Appearances include: "Beyond the Fig Leaf", Central Television documentary featuring neo-Naturists, Noel Edmond's "Time of Your Life" with Desmond Morris, "Hail the New Puritans" Channel Four film with Michael Clark, "Lords of the New Church" video directed by Derek Jarman.