Though not all the art critics were part of the in crowd on this occasion, the buzz around Tate Modern’s spectacular “Leigh Bowery!” exhibition has been undeniable. It is the first major museum show dedicated to the legendary cultural figure—an artist, performer, fashion designer, club promoter, and T.V. personality. In celebrating Bowery in its 25th year, Tate Modern is making a bold programming choice to recognize the considerable influence of underground countercultures on contemporary artists.
Born in Melbourne in 1961, Bowery moved to London in 1980 and fast became a regular fixture of the city’s queer nightlife. He commanded attention for his flamboyantly unconventional dress and soon built up a milieu of admirers for his razor sharp wit. Embodying the outré spirit of free expression encouraged by clubs like Taboo, the Cha Cha, and Fridge, Bowery was drawn to these spaces for their crowds, which included some of his generation’s greatest artistic talents, like Derek Jarman, Isaac Julien, Cerith Wyn Evans, Neneh Cherry, Jean Paul Gaultier, John Galliano, Grayson Perry, and Peter Doig.
Although a museum show celebrating Bowery’s role as an artist and muse during this richly generative era is a breakthrough in terms of representation for long maligned forms of creative expression, the occasion is bittersweet. Bowery reportedly told musician Boy George that he hoped one day to make it into the Tate, but he would not live to see his belated retrospective. He died of AIDS-related complications in 1994.
Installation view of “Leigh Bowery!” at Tate Modern in London. Photo: Larina Annora Fernandes. © Tate Photography.
Among Bowery’s many performances that are spotlighted by Tate Modern, some saw him embraced by pockets of the traditional art world during his lifetime. In 1988, Bowery staged a five-day performance at Anthony d’Offay Gallery, during which he adopted a variety of poses, including draping himself over a chaise longue, before a two-way mirror, so that both he and his audience was watching himself. Each day Bowery wore a different one of his trademark “Looks” and the experience was turned multi-sensory thanks to the introduction of scents and a soundtrack of field recordings of insects mixed by DJ Malcolm Duffy. The presentation was followed up by a feature in choreographer Mark Clark’s piece Hetrospective at the same gallery the following year, as well as a performance with his close friend and later wife Nicola Rainbird at the Serpentine.
“Every day was a performance for Leigh, even if there was only an audience of one,” his close friend, the artist Sue Tilley, recently recalled for the “Leigh Bowery!” exhibition catalogue. “Of course, Leigh’s real stage was nightclubs. He always made a grand entrance, usually debuting a new fantastic outfit he had been making all week. We’d probably go to three or four clubs a week when I first met him–anywhere if we heard that there was something on. We’d walk in, get a drink, wander around to see who we knew, and then dance like maniacs until the lights came on.”
Bowery’s many artistic achievements are finally being institutionally recognized, but he also served as a source of inspiration to friends and collaborators. By many accounts, Bowery’s willingness to break with convention and keep pushing himself into unchartered and often taboo creative territory was a liberating force that influenced the practices of those who surrounded him. Here are five artists for whom Bowery was a cherished muse.
Stephen Willats
Stephen Willats, Are you good enough for the cha cha cha? (1982). Photo: © Stephen Willats, Tate Collection.
The conceptual artist Stephen Willats, whose work is currently also included in Tate Modern’s survey “Electric Dreams: Art and Technology Before the Internet” (through June 1), met Bowery at the Cha Cha Club, which was tucked at the back of gay nightclub Heaven. It had a notoriously strict door policy, with co-founder Scarlett Cannon asking wannabe entrants “are you good enough for the Cha Cha?”
“At the time, [Bowery] was developing his ‘Futurist’ image and had already begun to evolve his approach as an artist in articulating the language of interpersonal presentation of the self, centering on himself as the artwork,” Willats recalled in the “Leigh Bowery!” catalogue.
Cannon and fellow co-founder Michael Hardy collaborated with Willats on this triptych of panels celebrating the club that featured detritus picked up off the floor at the end of a night and photos of frequent revelers, including Bowery. Amid squashed cigarette packets, beer cans, and a discarded hairbrush are handwritten accounts of nights at the Cha Cha. They underscore the club as a safe haven for those who felt alienated from mainstream society.
“Have become so used to mixing with gay people all the time, or being with people that are completely open-minded,” wrote Hardy. “You forget about all the narrow-minded people that really exist and thats the whole thing that I got into, you just forget about the whole straight world.” The work debuted at Lisson Gallery in 1983.
Rachel Auburn
Rachel Auburn, Leigh (1982). Photo: © Rachel Auburn.
The fashion designer and D.J. Rachel Auburn met Bowery when he visited her stall Vena Cava in Kensington Market, where she sold her own experimental designs and vintage pieces. “I had already clocked Leigh mincing around on Portobello Road because he had the build of an Australian rugby player but was wearing tweed jackets with big shoulder pads and shirts with pointy collars, wide trousers, and clogs,” she recalled for the “Leigh Bowery!” catalogue.
The pair regularly met up at Taboo nightclub and shared ideas about fashion, eventually debuting their own collections side-by-side at the “New London in New York” fashion show in New York in 1983. “When they ended up being sold at Macy’s, it was considered outrageous because people thought they were similar to what bag ladies wore on the street,” said Auburn.
“Leigh and I both loved art, film, literature, and fashion; he was the first person I could talk to about those things,” she added. “Whenever we went abroad, we would spend all our time in museums. Leigh particularly liked the Museum of Decorative Arts in Berlin. Leigh was influenced by the work of Viennese Actionists, which we saw in Amsterdam, and we both loved Robert Mapplethorpe’s photographs. Art would stimulate ideas for designs. For instance, Leigh got the idea of the target motif on his early kaftans from Jasper Johns’s ‘Target’ paintings.”
Sue Tilley
Sue Tilley, Untitled (Portrait of Leigh Bowery) (1985-6). Photo: © Sue Tilley.
One of Bowery’s closest friends was the writer, model, and artist Sue Tilley. Her portrait of him was a true collaboration: Bowery added a grid of thread spools over the painting, referencing his habit of hand-sewing elaborate costumes to debut during his next night out. The work captures one of the sitter’s classic “Looks,” a provocative style of dress and body art that Bowery would adopt for a period of time. In this example, spots that had covered his face spread over his clothes and wig, which some read as a reference to the AIDS-related illness Kaposi sarcoma.
“His energy fueled the night as he approached practically everyone there, either to admire their outfit or to make some witty comment about how they should have tried harder,” Tilley fondly recalled in the show’s catalogue. “But whether it was a compliment or a put-down, no one cared. They were just grateful to have been noticed by Leigh.”
Lucian Freud
Lucian Freud, Nude with Leg Up (Leigh Bowery), 1992. Photo: © The Lucian Freud Archive. All RightsReserved 2024.
Bowery’s best known artistic collaboration was a series of portraits by Lucian Freud from the early 1990s. The pair first met at Taboo and then again when the older painter visited Bowery’s 1988 performance before a two-way mirror at Anthony d’Offay gallery. Of all the work to come from Bowery’s expansive creative universe, it is the Freud paintings that received mainstream recognition within the traditional art world. The sitter had known since 1988 that he had HIV, only informing Rainbird and Tilley, and the tender works strip the performer of clothing and body paint to reveal a man in a state of starkly vulnerable repose.
“They got the best out of each other,” Freud’s daughter Bella told The World of Interiors. “They were both ambitious to break boundaries and the [large] scale was something else. Leigh gave Lucian the idea to do that.” She added: “They had such a good time together and my father was very impressed by Leigh’s performances and he liked having someone who was up for trying new things. […] When he died I remember talking to Dad and he was crying on the phone because Leigh was so important to him.”
Charles Atlas
Charles Atlas, Still from Mrs Peanut Visits New York (1999). Photo: © Charles Atlas. Courtesy of the artist and Luhring Augustine, New York.
Bowery collaborated with the American video artist Charles Atlas on multiple projects. One, the film Hail the New Puritan (1986), is a fake documentary about the Scottish choreographer Michael Clark that was set in the east London council flat that Bowery shared with the artist Trojan. Bowery wore a futuristic, Hindu deity-inspired look with a kaftan and a painted blue face. His deconstructed fashion designs were also featured in a dance sequence set to music by The Fall.
In Atlas’s Mrs Peanut Visits New York (1999), Bowery can be seen strutting along the streets of Manhattan’s Meatpacking District in 1992 in a homemade bodysuit interpretation of “Mr. Peanut,” the Planters’ Peanut mascot in a flora dress and a top hat. All the while, the eccentric look draws surprised stares from passersby.
Atlas introduced Bowery to Marina Abramović, and the three collaborated on the performance Delusional, for which she wore a sheer “queen rat costume” made by Bowery and 400 live rats filled the stage. Though she is known for boundary-pushing work produced over many decades, Abramović describes Delusional as “the most insane work I have made to this day.”
“His impact was strong on me immediately,” she recalled. “I learned so much from him about shame, about extremes. He was a true original, unique and fearless.”
“Leigh Bowery!” is on view through August 31 at Tate Modern, Bankside, London. More
