Tate Modern, Bankside, London, SE1 9TG
27 February – 31 August 2025
Leigh Bowery arrived in the UK from Australia in 1980. He grew up in a conservative family in Sunshine, a suburb of Melbourne. He was a larger-than-life, performance artist, a living sculpture.
He designed costumes for Michael Clark, became an artwork installation at the Anthony d’Offay gallery and sat for Lucien Freud.
He co-founded Taboo in 1985, the campest, most dissolute club in the West End of London, defined by a strict door policy, ‘Would you let yourself in?’.
There is an array of beautifully sculptural costumes, intimidating and powerful, they peer down at you. The originals were damaged by liquids, spillages and the stresses and strains of performance.
Lucien Freud, Nude with Leg up, (Leigh Bowery), 1992, Oil paint on linen. There are several other works by Freud included; Bowery sat for him on numerous occasions, and they became good friends.
Sue Tilley, Untitled (Portrait of Leigh Bowery), 1985-6, Cotton reels on metal on acrylic on wood. A painting by his friend and confidante, Bowery hammered nails across the painting to store his cotton reels.
Dave Swindells, Summer 1987, Leigh Bowery in the crypt of the Limelight Club.
Audio visual ‘club’ space.
Dick Jewell, Attudism, 1983-7, printed 2025, Photograph, inkjet print on paper. Fergus Greer, ‘Look’ x 3, Photograph, C-print on paper, mounted on aluminium.
Andrew Logan, Robyn Beeche, Stage photographer unknown, Alternative Miss World, ‘Earth’, 1986. A series of photographs taken at the notorious Alternative Miss World ‘Earth’.
The first Alternative Miss World took place in the studio of Andrew Logan and has continued sporadically, in various locations, until 2018. The competition follows the format of Miss World.
‘Birth’ costume, from which Bowery ‘gave birth’ to Nicola Rainbird, who was strapped to his chest and would burst through a velcro opening.
While progressing through the exhibition, there’s a feeling of ‘you had to be there’, this is assuaged by an audio/visual ‘club’ space, featuring music and movies of the time, including Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, where ‘you can be there’.
The exhibition walls are peppered with imagery, many Polaroids, of friends and participants in the counterculture club world. Bowery married his long-term soulmate and collaborator Nicola Bateman (now Nicola Rainbird) on 13 May 1994. The exhibition darkens as you approach the end, overshadowed by the Aids pandemic. Bowery died of an Aids-related illness later that year.
