Leigh Bowery! finally an exhibition in London
At the Tate Modern, we (re)discover the irrepressible genius of Bowery, a performer and all-round artist, through a rich compendium where fashion, music, photos and videos convey much of his life on the edge.
Finally. Leigh Bowery! is the exhibition that celebrates the most irreverent, kaleidoscopic and courageous figure who in the 20th century animated without reserve with art, fashion and performance that precious liminal space of the expressive sphere that we all have, in an absolutely unique and controversial way. From 27 February to 21 August 2025 at the Tate Modern in London it is possible to immerse yourself in the intense and colourful life of Leigh Bowery. An Australian from Sunshine, a suburb of Melbourne , who then became a definitive Londoner in 1980, he was a human being beyond the ordinary. Defining him as an artist, club kid, model, television personality, stylist and musician could also be reductive, certainly out of place: categorizing his deeds would mean minimising the sense and effectiveness of the practice of contamination, the only driving force of his experience.
In his short but extraordinary life, Bowery (1961-1994) reimagined clothes and makeup as forms of sculpture and painting, tested the limits of decorum, and created a new form of performance art to explore the body as a shape-shifting instrument with the power to challenge norms of aesthetics, sexuality and gender. For the first time, Tate Modern brings together his extravagant and dazzling costumes with paintings, photographs and videos to explore how they changed art, fashion and popular culture forever. Perverse and provocative, she placed the theatricalisation of the self at the centre. The previous major exhibition was LEIGH BOWERY: Tell Them I’ve Gone to Papua New Guinea at Fitzrovia Chapel in 2022, a month-long exhibition of seven of the most iconic costumes Leigh designed, created and twirled around London during the 1980s and early 1990s. Appropriate location: it is in fact the only remaining building of the demolished Middlesex Hospital where Leigh died of complications from AIDS on New Year's Eve 1994. He was only thirty-three years old.
If you label me, you deny me
Leigh Bowery! What's the Exhibition at Tate Modern Like?
The exhibition on Leigh Bowery is a lysergic journey into his Technicolour, camp and maximalist universe from which it will be impossible to leave without retaining precious traces. To make a quick connection to fashion, among the designers who have cited, paid homage to and celebrated him, we can mention Alexander McQueen who in the 2009 autumn winter collection evoked Bowery's physiognomy through exaggerated red mouths, cans as curlers in his hair, all-over print fabrics on XL silhouettes. Obviously he wasn't the only one. Over time, from John Galliano to Rick Owens , from Charles Jeffrey Loverboy to Gareth Pugh, arriving at Maison Margiela and Walter Van Beirendonck , his influences have inspired creatives from every latitude, from Lady Gaga to Beth Ditto to the artist Pandemonia who played the role of an inflatable creature.
While by night he let his monsters live in other dimensions from their own selves, by day Bowery designed costumes for Culture Club and Michael Clark's dance company, as well as dabbling in the artistic direction of Massive Attack's projects. For this reason, Tate's curation in collaboration with Nicola Rainbird, Bowery's close collaborator and wife - and now director and owner of the Estate of Leigh Bowery, together with the support of Margery King, Fiontán Moran and Jessica Baxter, also showcases the works of Charles Atlas Hail the New Puritan from 1985 and the film Because We Must from 1989, and many documents on his disturbing and disturbing performances. Among all, we can mention "Mirror" from 1988 at the Anthony d'Offay Gallery , which saw him for five days dressing, undressing and posing in front of a two-way mirror, allowing spectators to watch him without his knowledge while a banana essence aroma periodically spread throughout the exhibition space. Let's just say the tip of the iceberg of his thoughts on the formal conception of exasperated artistic expression taken to the limit of the sphere of provocation. In doing so, Leigh Bowery not only put his body on stage but also put to the test the very act of looking that belongs to each of us.
Reimagining himself as an alien creature, Leigh Bowery allowed himself everything. Like omnipotence over life itself. His is in fact the performance dedicated to birth, a visceral and cathartic moment, in which lying on a table on the stage of Taboo, an underground club he runs, and dressed only in a raincoat, after loud moans and the emission of fluids, he emphatically gives birth to his trusted collaborator, who later became his wife Nicola Rainbird , up until that point carried in his lap under the trench coat thanks to an ingenious harness, here documented in the shot by Fergus Greer. Years later, Rick Owens will bring the same performative system to the catwalk for the spring summer 2016 collection to celebrate Leigh's spirit in an attempt to shake the memories of his audience in front of the value of Bowery's work.
Bowery's close friendship with Lucian Freud marked a turning point in his relationship with the contemporary art world in the late 1980s. Several personal portraits of Bowery by Freud are on display at the Tate Modern, demonstrating how the German artist presented a new vision of this extravagant performer. Driven by the intimacy of posing for Freud, Bowery increasingly began to use his body as raw material, notably stating that "flesh is the most fabulous of fabrics."
The exhibition culminates with one of the last chapters of Bowery's life, his foray into music with the band Minty. Combining his love of performance, shock value and humour, it allowed him to achieve the full expression of his creative ideas, showing his constant desire to experiment, take risks and create a space for questioning. Bowery's final performance at London's Freedom Café in November 1994 featured a young Lee 'Alexander' McQueen and friend Lucian Freud, demonstrating just how far-reaching his influence on the worlds of art and fashion had become.
Dress as if your life depends on it, or don't worry, Leigh Bowery
