Leigh Bowery’s Exhibition at Tate Modern

Kicking off the year with creativity and eccentricity, Tate Modern presents a hot exhibition  on the life and work of Leigh Bowery. He was an outlandish artist, body sculptor, and  unapologetic trailblazer who forever changed the landscape of art and culture. On his  journey from Australia to England, he took the London scene by storm, mingling with some  of the most influential figures of his time. While he is best known for his flamboyant  appearances on television, his legacy extends far beyond that. Bowery redefined the  boundaries of art, fashion, and performance, using nightlife as his stage to challenge  representations of gender, sexuality, and beauty.  

His career blossomed in London’s underground club scene, where he turned it into his  personal runway. Clubs like Taboo—which Bowery himself founded in 1985—became  hubs of wild self-expression and outrageous performances. With extravagant costumes  and larger-than-life appearances, Bowery’s unyielding imagination knew no bounds. It was  here that Bowery truly honed his distinctive style, mixing the grotesque with the glamorous  and treating his body as a canvas for his art. His costumes were more than just clothing— they were works of art that challenged traditional ideas of esthetics, pushing the limits of  what was considered acceptable or “normal” in the image of the human form. 

At Tate Modern, this exhibition will provide a unique perspective and a complete immersion  in Bowery’s world. Featuring his extravagant costumes alongside photography, videos, and  paintings, the show guides visitors in the energy of the 1980s club scene that Bowery  helped define. The collaboration with DJ and filmmaker Jeffrey Hinton is especially  notable, as it brings to life the Taboo era through music and video installations that  recreate the euphoria of those wild nights. 

Bowery’s extravagant costumes were often the result of collaboration with talented  designers like Nicola Rainbird and corsetier Mr. Pearl. These hand-crafted pieces, featured  in the exhibition, showcase Bowery’s dedication to using his body as a tool for  contemporary surrealism. All costumes were carefully produced to defy conventional  beauty standards, exploring themes of transformation, alien-like personas, and  reimagining forms of a body. Fergus Greer’s photography of Bowery gives us a glimpse  into these detailed works, capturing the complexity of his creative process and the  boldness of his visions. 

But he was not just a nightclub personality—his creativity also took him into the worlds of  dance and performance art. He collaborated with choreographer Michael Clark for over a  decade, designing costumes for the dancer’s performances. This collaboration deepened  Bowery’s understanding of how fashion and performance could meet, allowing him to  widen the boundaries of stage art even further. The costumes he created for Clark’s  productions were unprecedented in fashion and art, combining his genius for spectacle  with a larger exploration of identity and appearances. 

Alongside his artistic career, Bowery’s influence spread into the fine art world. His close  relationship with the artist Lucian Freud helped elevate his position as a cultural figure.  Freud’s raw, unyielding portraits of Bowery further cemented Bowery’s place in influential  circles. HIs portraits offer a fascinating insight into Bowery’s persona, showing how his  flamboyant style became an integral part of his identity and artistic legacy.

The exhibition will culminate with Bowery’s foray into music with his band Minty. Uniting his  love of performance, shock value and humour, it enabled him to achieve the full  expression of his creative ideas, showcasing his constant desire to experiment, take risks  and create a space for questions. Bowery’s final performance at London’s Freedom Café  in November 1994 was attended by a young Lee ‘Alexander’ McQueen and Lucian Freud,  demonstrating how far-reaching his influence on the worlds of both art and fashion had  become.  

It is a celebration of an artist who refused to be limited by conventional ideas of beauty,  identity, or art!