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NAKED SELFIE 2022
My life as a Neo Naturist from 1980 to 2022, with a thirty year gap in the middle. Paintings made in my studio in Jevington where I was living in 2022 with Jennifer Binnie who co founded the Neo Naturists with me alongside her sister . Images of the moments which have survived were shown with the paintings - we didn't have i phones back then so many cabarets were unrecorded, and then my photogrpahich archives were destroted in a fire at my parents house along with albums going back through generations., Finding the surviving photos has been a bit of detective work. I have very few images of myself as a child or teenager....... you could be easily believe that I arrived on the planet in body paint round 1981......
01
Let Them Eat Brioche 1980
A dress I made for the St Martins alternative fashion show in 1980, Boy George also had a bride dress and we both wanted to close the show - we almost came to blows on the catwalk, it became my go-to party dress....
02
Let Them Eat Brioche
I arrived at St Martins at the moment punk was declared officially dead. Something had to fill the void, after the austerity came the decadence in what outsiders called the New Romantic movement. We didn’t call it that because we didn’t think we were new or romantic, we thought we were old as the hills and cynical as shit, because we were art students.
Even so, we loved sashaying around Soho in ripped ballgowns bought for a few quid from the stock sale at Charles For theatrical costumiers, imagining ourselves the heroes and heroines of a bodice ripper directed by Fellini.
03
Queens of the Night Bus 1981
A nightclub look at the time .... actually also a daytime look, I usually went staright from the studio to whatever event was going on that was cool, free and serving booze.....
04
Queens of the Nightbus
The dress code at the underground clubs like the Blitz was //go outrageous or go home. I would go and get ready at the Warren Street squat where Christine lived which was the nerve centre of the emerging club culture - or Culture Club as Boy George lived with her.
The atmosphere was like a grunge version of the court of Versailles, towering hairdos, ripped lace and crinolines, drunkeness scandal and dodgy plumbing.
One night the body came out will we were looking for a new more radical look, and we took outrageous to a whole new level.
05
Diana Dors was There 1982
Me and Christine Binnie in bodypaint in the studio - we didn't have a camera at our first cabaret. I guess we didn't realise what a historic moment it would be with hindsight. Anyway it was always about the performance, not the documentation!
06
Diana Dors was There
Our first cabaret -we didn't have much of a plan, but we had a orange silk parachute we'd found in a skip and a bag of body paint. We called ourselves The Segment and went to a dinner dance in Mayfair. Diana Dors was there and Jen gave her a banana, the rest is details.
Carry On the Neo Naturists .
07
Wurzel Gummidge Day 1982
This is the area to introduce viewers to the context of this image. Briefly explain what it represents, why it matters, and how it aligns with the theme of your gallery.
08
The Burned Bone BBQ
Wapping - the B2 Gallery Live in.... this was day five and only the core Neo Naturists were still there, feeling quite crusty and exhausted. The police had told us they'd 'turn a blind eye' to our naked shenanigans if we stayed between the tide lines, so we ate burned bones and drank Guinness on the beach .....
09
Smashing the Chains of Opression 1983
The Knives Beside the Plates, Hermine Demoriane’s matriarchal rewrite of Othello x Scheherezade at the Notre Dame Hall. I was the First Artist. Nudity had been banned by the church, but I was wearing as little as possible as I watered the roses with menstrual blood, because apart from dismantling the patriarchy brick by brick, I was also trying to pick up Jen’s sexy upstairs neighbour.
10
Smashing the Chains of Opression
I played First Women in Hermine Demorianes feminist take on Scheherezade, Othello, and the history of the world.
11
Dance With Me 1983
Playing a belly dancing caryatid in Derek Jarman’s pop video for Lords of the New Church. We had bit parts in Caravaggio but ended up on the cutting room floor, so this was a nice consolation prize, although the gold body paint oxidised in the heat and stained my pores green for weeks to come……
12
Dance with Me
13
My Covent Garden Début 1985
Neo Naturist cheer leading team, this photo was taken at Taboo, but we got to do it on stage at the Royal Opera House, acheiving a life long ambition..... I didn’t know it then but it was to be my last performance for 29 years, when the curtain fell it fell on that phase of my life.
14
Covent Garden Début
Not as I imagined it when I was an 8 year old girl watching Margot Fonteyn swirling across the stage in white feathers and sparkling tutu. I swore I'd be on that stage one day.... I hop that some 8 year old girl watching me had a similar experience and swore to become a naked performance artist one day.....
15
Miss Surf Mama 2014
Return to the Stage after 29 years in the Neon Colours Alternative Miss World at the Globe Theatre
16
Miss Surf Mama
29 years after the Royal Opera House, I took to the stage again, at the Globe Theatre in Andrew Logan’s Miss World. My first book Surf Mama had just been published, and I didn’t go naked in case it shocked the literary circles I was planning to move into….. this look should win me the Booker Prize.
I had ambitiously promised to transform from ancient Hawaiian sea monster into surf chick on stage…….
17
The Best of All Possible Worlds at Studio Voltaire
Getting the body paint out again after 29years .....
18
The Best of All Possible Worlds at Stusio Voltaire
The Neo Naturist Retrospective at Studio Voltaire - returning to my tribe. When we were asked to perform I couldn't decide whether it was genius or madness to go back to being a naked performance artist at 56 in the age of the i phone and the internet. I decided that like all the best ideas it was a bit of both.
19
Mermaids at Centre Point 1984
How did we not get arrested? Mermaid performance in Charing Cross road.
20
Wapping Mermaid in the Drowned City of Londinium.
Inspired by the - unfinished- Neo Naturist Epic, the ascent of woman, our summer cabaret special Sexist Crabs.
21
Come Hell or High Water 2019
Winter Solstice performance on the Thames beach in Limehouse, back between the tide lines on winter solstice 2019, reclaiming a pagan version of Santa Lucia myth, the she-demon Lussi flies through the night skies, appeased only by gifts of saffron buns and alcohol. The temples of profit glitter in the setting sun, our ritual fires and banshee music cleanse the obstacles of the last year, but there were many more to come…….
22
Saturnalia
Neo Naturist fire ritual to banish the demons
23
24
01 / 24
Let Them Eat Brioche 1980
A dress I made for the St Martins alternative fashion show in 1980, Boy George also had a bride dress and we both wanted to close the show - we almost came to blows on the catwalk, it became my go-to party dress....
01
Let Them Eat Brioche 1980
A dress I made for the St Martins alternative fashion show in 1980, Boy George also had a bride dress and we both wanted to close the show - we almost came to blows on the catwalk, it became my go-to party dress....
02
Let Them Eat Brioche
I arrived at St Martins at the moment punk was declared officially dead. Something had to fill the void, after the austerity came the decadence in what outsiders called the New Romantic movement. We didn’t call it that because we didn’t think we were new or romantic, we thought we were old as the hills and cynical as shit, because we were art students.
Even so, we loved sashaying around Soho in ripped ballgowns bought for a few quid from the stock sale at Charles For theatrical costumiers, imagining ourselves the heroes and heroines of a bodice ripper directed by Fellini.
03
Queens of the Night Bus 1981
A nightclub look at the time .... actually also a daytime look, I usually went staright from the studio to whatever event was going on that was cool, free and serving booze.....
04
Queens of the Nightbus
The dress code at the underground clubs like the Blitz was //go outrageous or go home. I would go and get ready at the Warren Street squat where Christine lived which was the nerve centre of the emerging club culture - or Culture Club as Boy George lived with her.
The atmosphere was like a grunge version of the court of Versailles, towering hairdos, ripped lace and crinolines, drunkeness scandal and dodgy plumbing.
One night the body came out will we were looking for a new more radical look, and we took outrageous to a whole new level.
05
Diana Dors was There 1982
Me and Christine Binnie in bodypaint in the studio - we didn't have a camera at our first cabaret. I guess we didn't realise what a historic moment it would be with hindsight. Anyway it was always about the performance, not the documentation!
06
Diana Dors was There
Our first cabaret -we didn't have much of a plan, but we had a orange silk parachute we'd found in a skip and a bag of body paint. We called ourselves The Segment and went to a dinner dance in Mayfair. Diana Dors was there and Jen gave her a banana, the rest is details.
Carry On the Neo Naturists .
07
Wurzel Gummidge Day 1982
This is the area to introduce viewers to the context of this image. Briefly explain what it represents, why it matters, and how it aligns with the theme of your gallery.
08
The Burned Bone BBQ
Wapping - the B2 Gallery Live in.... this was day five and only the core Neo Naturists were still there, feeling quite crusty and exhausted. The police had told us they'd 'turn a blind eye' to our naked shenanigans if we stayed between the tide lines, so we ate burned bones and drank Guinness on the beach .....
09
Smashing the Chains of Opression 1983
The Knives Beside the Plates, Hermine Demoriane’s matriarchal rewrite of Othello x Scheherezade at the Notre Dame Hall. I was the First Artist. Nudity had been banned by the church, but I was wearing as little as possible as I watered the roses with menstrual blood, because apart from dismantling the patriarchy brick by brick, I was also trying to pick up Jen’s sexy upstairs neighbour.
10
Smashing the Chains of Opression
I played First Women in Hermine Demorianes feminist take on Scheherezade, Othello, and the history of the world.
11
Dance With Me 1983
Playing a belly dancing caryatid in Derek Jarman’s pop video for Lords of the New Church. We had bit parts in Caravaggio but ended up on the cutting room floor, so this was a nice consolation prize, although the gold body paint oxidised in the heat and stained my pores green for weeks to come……
12
Dance with Me
13
My Covent Garden Début 1985
Neo Naturist cheer leading team, this photo was taken at Taboo, but we got to do it on stage at the Royal Opera House, acheiving a life long ambition..... I didn’t know it then but it was to be my last performance for 29 years, when the curtain fell it fell on that phase of my life.
14
Covent Garden Début
Not as I imagined it when I was an 8 year old girl watching Margot Fonteyn swirling across the stage in white feathers and sparkling tutu. I swore I'd be on that stage one day.... I hop that some 8 year old girl watching me had a similar experience and swore to become a naked performance artist one day.....
15
Miss Surf Mama 2014
Return to the Stage after 29 years in the Neon Colours Alternative Miss World at the Globe Theatre
16
Miss Surf Mama
29 years after the Royal Opera House, I took to the stage again, at the Globe Theatre in Andrew Logan’s Miss World. My first book Surf Mama had just been published, and I didn’t go naked in case it shocked the literary circles I was planning to move into….. this look should win me the Booker Prize.
I had ambitiously promised to transform from ancient Hawaiian sea monster into surf chick on stage…….
17
The Best of All Possible Worlds at Studio Voltaire
Getting the body paint out again after 29years .....
18
The Best of All Possible Worlds at Stusio Voltaire
The Neo Naturist Retrospective at Studio Voltaire - returning to my tribe. When we were asked to perform I couldn't decide whether it was genius or madness to go back to being a naked performance artist at 56 in the age of the i phone and the internet. I decided that like all the best ideas it was a bit of both.
19
Mermaids at Centre Point 1984
How did we not get arrested? Mermaid performance in Charing Cross road.
20
Wapping Mermaid in the Drowned City of Londinium.
Inspired by the - unfinished- Neo Naturist Epic, the ascent of woman, our summer cabaret special Sexist Crabs.
21
Come Hell or High Water 2019
Winter Solstice performance on the Thames beach in Limehouse, back between the tide lines on winter solstice 2019, reclaiming a pagan version of Santa Lucia myth, the she-demon Lussi flies through the night skies, appeased only by gifts of saffron buns and alcohol. The temples of profit glitter in the setting sun, our ritual fires and banshee music cleanse the obstacles of the last year, but there were many more to come…….
22
Saturnalia
Neo Naturist fire ritual to banish the demons
23
24
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