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NEO-NATURISTS HAIL ATHE NEW PURITAN

Nature is inspirational and it doesn’t take much imagination to name a dozen painters who use nature as their starting point in art now, begin with Polly Morgan’s lovely taxidermied animals and work round, but The neo naturists were something quite different, a little clique of unique artists (Grayson Perry, the most famous, a Turner prize winner ceramicist and babydoll dress wearer par excellence – Wilma, surfer chic, and the two sisters Jennifer and Christine Binney)who used nature to pin point the ridiculous preciousness and pretentiousness of art and attire in the 1980s. By taking off their clothes and using themselves as laughing canvases they became daubed men and women, transformed into massive multicoloured faces on stomachs. Occasionally they wore the odd lobster or crab, still nature, but plastics such as clingfilm and cellotape were often used not to disguise but accentuate body parts and the absurd prevalence of clothes as artifice. Everything was about being outrageous then, I remember nobody blinked an eye when Stephen Linnard appeared at le Beat Route nightclub wearing an entire real zebras head balanced on his own, mane falling down his back. Fiona Dealey bound so tightly in polished leather that she wouldn’t have looked out of place as a working S&M Maitress, Pinkie in her milk-maid dirndels adrift from her sheep, Boy George wrapped in Westwood the way others were cloaked in Papal purple. I was no better (or worse) in two feet high turbans and wedding dresses. Fancy dress had taken over normal living, the façade whether humorous or high fashion, was everything. The Neo Naturists stripped all that away by being even more outrageous – baring all. Naked they were Anti-Page 3 girl pouting vixens, anorexic sex symbol models, Hot Gossip and self mutilating over serious performance art. ( COMPELT TEXT HERE ) MISS BINNIE MENU            /         NEO NATURISTS MENU