{"id":86166,"date":"2025-08-21T12:15:04","date_gmt":"2025-08-21T12:15:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/86166\/"},"modified":"2025-08-21T12:15:04","modified_gmt":"2025-08-21T12:15:04","slug":"leigh-bowery-was-his-own-artwork","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/86166\/","title":{"rendered":"Leigh Bowery Was His Own Artwork\u00a0"},"content":{"rendered":"

LONDON \u2014 The very idea of encapsulating the concept of Leigh Bowery<\/a> within a gallery space should not work. He was not someone who brought art objects into the world, but was instead an embodiment of ideas and acts that can no more easily be categorized as singularly performance art than as fashion design or dance. Curator Fiont\u00e1n Moran emphasizes this outsized character by adding the titular exclamation mark for Tate Modern\u2019s Leigh Bowery!<\/a>, which manages to communicate via some loud curating the visceral creativity of Bowery\u2019s life and work, while also clearly and diligently guiding us chronologically through key eras and themes.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Because the man himself was the art, we may find him spread across a plethora of formats, from photographs snapped at split second moments of intimacy or bodily transgression in clubs, to the now empty shells of outfits (the word \u201ccostumes\u201d denotes detachment whereas Bowery seemed to \u201clive\u201d his garments), snippets of magazines, and video appearances. In Bowery\u2019s lifetime, few of these formats existed in a gallery context \u2014 they were part of his social world; he lived his art largely in nightclubs, on the street, or in performances. Garishly colored walls, Star Trek-themed wallpaper, disco lights, and a mirror that bears the phrase \u201cWould you let yourself in?\u201d \u2014 echoing the question the bouncer at Bowery and Tony Gordon\u2019s club Taboo<\/a> would ask badly dressed punters in 1985 \u2014 make tangible for the visitor a zeitgeist where dressing as flamboyantly as possible in clubs and social scenes was the ultimate form of self-expression. Moran rightly notes that in the absence of social media this was the most effective outlet for public self-expression. Costuming, including head-to-toe polka dots, fake lips affixed through pierced cheeks, and headgear bearing light bulbs on either side, illustrates how dress facilitated a concept of performance that went beyond conventional notions of fashion and, often, gender.<\/p>\n

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\t\tInstallation view of Leigh Bowery! at Tate Modern. Back wall: video of Michael Clark performing in a costume partly designed by Bowery (photo Olivia McEwan\/Hyperallergic)<\/p>\n

The captions, which are written in a conversational tone and avoid jargon, are some of the most effective in recent memory. They present this slice of British history in a language that should resonate with broad audiences. Setting the scene: \u201cLeigh Bowery (1961\u20131994). A small town boy from Sunshine, Australia. He\u2019s bored. Inspired by the punk scene [he] leaves fashion college and arrives in London in October 1980.\u201d Elsewhere, capturing just how important a platform clubs were in the absence of social media: \u201cThe 1980s was the era of club culture \u2013 no social media, only hand-made or word-of-mouth invites. IYKYK.\u201d<\/p>\n

Many visitors who are unfamiliar with Bowery may see a polaroid of him looking outr\u00e9 or bizarre and wonder why. Over time, his use of makeup became sculptural, and his clothing, which he designed and made \u2014 sometimes with his friend, collaborator, and eventual wife, Nicola (Rainbird) Bateman \u2014 increasingly manipulated his ample frame and physicality. He flouted tradition in his response to differing sociopolitical situations. In 1980, Bowery was under the age of consent and, as the captions note, he could not \u201c[lawfully] freely embrace his sexuality\u201d yet, they continue, \u201cHe did.\u201d Furthermore, by bringing humor, parody, and slapstick to catwalks and lifestyle TV shows, he \u201c[disrupted] established conventions of fashion, high society and culture\u201d: His recreation of the famous \u201cHello Boys\u201d Wonderbra commercial<\/a> as a large man is a gleeful satire. Nothing was off limits, with instances of blackface \u2014 rightfully criticized by his contemporaries \u2014 in references to (supposedly parodic) minstrel shows. More constructive performances, however, targeted contemporary attitudes toward sexuality and gender: We are told that his marriage to Nicola was partly due to his fear of being deported for having sex in a public toilet in 1994. In one performance with Bateman, he wore a nylon nude suit with comically exaggerated breasts and \u201cgave birth\u201d to Nicola, who burst forth nude and tangled in sausages representing the umbilicus, a wry reversal of normative gender roles.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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\t\tReproduction of Leigh Bowery\u2019s recreated \u201cHello Boys\u201d ad (photo Olivia McEwan\/Hyperallergic)<\/p>\n

The sheer breadth of his oeuvre on display here, be it dress, dance, or performance, communicates that he represents far more than the 1980s New Romantic<\/a> music movement, or subsequent television parodies of what the general consuming public may consider \u201cweird performance art<\/a>.\u201d Bowery created a visual vocabulary all his own. Two nude portraits of him by Lucien Freud reveal a more vulnerable side to him. Despite the intensity of these guttural paintings, they feel muted in tone compared to bodysuits emblazoned with the phrase \u201cA CUNT,\u201d installed on the opposite wall. \u00a0<\/p>\n

Moran explained to me that the exhibition was born of longstanding discussions with the director of exhibitions and programs at Tate Modern, Catherine Wood, about how artistic practice was rethought throughout the 1980s, with Bowery among similarly influential and avant-garde figures such as filmmaker Derek Jarman and dancer Michael Clark \u2014 the latter of whom was a frequent collaborator; Bowery designed costumes for Clark\u2019s company and participated in some dance performances, as well as experimental films. These artists all worked in a time of austerity in the UK and often outside the accepted channels of the art market. While not explicitly stated in the show, Moran suggests that, given the current sociopolitical landscape of austerity and unease, Bowery\u2019s work \u2014 indeed, his whole approach to art and life, \u201ccontinually shifting appearance and discipline\u201d \u2014 may \u201chopefully speak to a contemporary generation of artists and creatives.\u201d In this sense, the show has pulled off a rare achievement: academically presenting an era of art history while also resonating with and possibly inspiring the sensitivities of today. In a contemporary society colored, or rather made creatively bland, by the homogenizing factor of social media, one yearns again for such an original artist who had the balls to stick two sequined fingers up to accepted norms.<\/p>\n

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\t\tInstallation view of one of Leigh Bowery\u2019s costumes for a performance (photo Olivia McEwan\/Hyperallergic)
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\t\tCostume designs by Leigh Bowery for the Michael Clark Dance Company (photo Natalie Haddad\/Hyperallergic)
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\t\tCostumes created and worn by Bowery on display in Leigh Bowery! (photo Natalie Haddad\/Hyperallergic)
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\t\tCostume fragments and photographs of garments designed and worn by Bowery (photo Natalie Haddad\/Hyperallergic)
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\t\tPhotograph by Derek Ridgers of Marc Vaultier, Taboo\u2019s doorman (photo Natalie Haddad\/Hyperallergic)
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\t\tVideo of Bowery performing in fake lips on display in Leigh Bowery! (photo Natalie Haddad\/Hyperallergic)<\/p>\n

Leigh Bowery!<\/a> continues at Tate Modern (Bankside, London, England) through August 31. The exhibition was curated by Fiont\u00e1n Moran, Jessica Baxter, Nicola Rainbird, and Margery King.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"LONDON \u2014 The very idea of encapsulating the concept of Leigh Bowery within a gallery space should not…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":86167,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[76,354,355,49,48,356,75,4472,24307,209,51222],"class_list":{"0":"post-86166","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-arts-and-design","8":"tag-arts","9":"tag-arts-and-design","10":"tag-artsanddesign","11":"tag-ca","12":"tag-canada","13":"tag-design","14":"tag-entertainment","15":"tag-london","16":"tag-performance-art","17":"tag-reviews","18":"tag-tate-modern"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/86166","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=86166"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/86166\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/86167"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=86166"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=86166"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=86166"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}