Jennifer Binnie: Mythology, Feminism, and Nature in British Art

Richard Saltoun Gallery, London

15 January – 1 March 2025 

Spanning four decades, Jennifer Binnie’s survey of paintings and works on paper at Richard Saltoun highlights the British artist’s longstanding exploration of mythology, female empowerment, spirituality and the natural world.

Binnie rose to prominence as one of the original members of the Neo-Naturists, a radical performance art/cabaret collective she co-founded in 1981 with her sister Christine Binnie and Wilma Johnson. Emerging from the dynamic subculture of the New Romantic club scene in London, the Neo-Naturists developed against the backdrop of the sweeping economic, political and cultural changes of the time. Rooted in body painting, folkloric rituals, and a rejection of Thatcherite conservatism, their performances took inspiration from early avant-garde movements and served as a subversive commentary on patriarchal hierarchies.
 

Alongside this, Jennifer Binnie developed her highly individual painting practice, blending autobiography with fantastical storytelling, echoing visions found in American writer Ursula Le Guin’s (1929–2018) science fiction and Donna Haraway’s eco-feminist theory.

First exhibited by James Birch throughout the 1980s, Binnie’s otherworldly paintings and drawings merge human figures, animals, and landscapes. Teaching ‘disengaged young people’ initially stimulated her to produce artwork inspired by ancient myths linked to rites of passage, rituals and a deep sense of rootedness. 

In Forest Visions, Binnie’s creative journey unfolds, beginning with the earliest work in the show, The Hunter’s Barrow (1982). The monumental painting draws on her childhood memories of the ancient burial mounds near where she grew up in East Sussex. Featuring a male figure – represented by her former partner Grayson Perry – horizontally floating in a cave-like space that evokes both a grave and a womb, the painting powerfully reflects on cycles of transformation and renewal.
 

One of Binnie’s more recent works, Gamekeeper with Dying Doe and Hound (2021), is set beneath a group of large, dark forest trees. A seated blonde female figure sits with her legs wide open between a doe and a hound, animals that symbolise vulnerability and mortality. Red liquid spills from the woman’s body into the ground, inviting interpretations of life force returning to the earth.

Binnie’s fascination with merging human and animal forms is also strikingly evident in works such as Fox Woman (2013). In this image, a female figure in a vibrant yellow dress is crowned with the head of a fox, embodying transformation, intuition and wisdom. The radiant energy of her female archetypal figures, grounded in personal experience yet universal in resonance, highlights Binnie’s ongoing meditation on the shared essence of life.

Colour is central to Binnie’s work, evident through the dark earthy tones of her forest settings to the vivid and bright hues that animate her dreamlike compositions. Her richly layered use of oil paint adds a visceral quality that enhances her work’s symbolic and emotional depth.
 

Recently featured in major exhibitions such as Women in Revolt! Art and Activism in the UK 1970–1990 at Tate Britain, with works like Man and Woman (1983), Binnie’s practice powerfully breaks down the artificial boundaries between humans and nature. Forest Visions serves as a timely reminder that, as seen in her recurring motif of a red beating heart – painted on both humans and animals – all life is interconnected. As she puts it, ‘it’s the connection between the beating heart of life that’s in both.’

Christine Takengny, The Roden Senior Curator, Museums Acquisitions

Jennifer Binnie: Forest Visions at Richard Saltoun Gallery

15 January – 1 March 2025