LEIGH BOWERY! at Tate Modern, London
Author: Melissa Stern
Fergus Greer. Session 1, Look 2. Photograph, c-print. 1988, printed 2025. Courtesy of Michael Hoppen Gallery. Photograph by Melissa Stern.
The Tate Modern has mounted an exhaustive -- and at times exhausting -- retrospective of the work of multimedia artist Leigh Bowery. The exhibition is arranged chronologically and includes costumes, videos, images other artists made of Bowery (including the famous Lucian Freud portraits), photography, and ephemera.
Leigh Bowery was a self-avowed scene maker and a magnet for attention. The artist, who died in 1991 at the age of 33, would have loved the prominence, seriousness, and scope with which the Tate Modern presents his work. The exhibition, “Leigh Bowery!” spans seven large rooms, and the exhibit is a bit overwhelming. The exhibition holds up a mirror to an artist who himself was over the top. If the goal is to capture the experience of the artist’s excess as well as his role in a specific zeitgeist, perhaps it succeeds. If it seeks to take Bowery more seriously by synthesizing his impact and presenting his best work decades after his death, however, it falls short.
Bowery was a transgressive figure of the 1980s. Born in Melbourne, Australia he fled to London as a young man with a burning desire to be part of something big. He was a club promoter and scene maker in the punk and gay club scene of 1980s London, designing outrageous costumes and headgear for himself and an occasional sidekick. A large man, he created larger-than-life drag personas that crossed over from the club scene into the art and fashion worlds. His clothing designs, though rarely produced as more than a one-off, were featured in fashion shows in London and New York.
Bowery was a frequent collaborator with the avant-garde ballet choreographer Michael Clark, and their collaborations were documented delightfully by the filmmaker Charles Atlas. Several of these superb videos are included in the exhibition as large wall-sized projections. This is some of the strongest work on view. Filmed in the mid-80’s they remain completely fresh, funny, naughty, and with some terrific dancing. Bowery makes frequent cameos in the videos, as well as having designed the costumes.
Installation view of Charles Atlas video and Leigh Bowery costumes. 1989. Photograph by Melissa Stern.
Bowery’s personality- at once flamboyant and charismatic- made him a perfect model for photographers, and much of this work in the exhibition charts his rise as a cultural icon. They are, for the most part, gorgeous color prints, large scale and perfectly composed. Do they rise beyond slick portraits? How would they stand alone, outside of the context of the exhibition? Hard to say.
Bowery also famously modeled for the painter Lucian Freud. In 1990s years Freud painted several portraits, each is rather tender in it’s attitude towards the sitter. These portraits are included in the show in startling contrast to everything else. Bowery is portrayed nude- in effect unmasked- often lying on a divan. Stripped of make-up, artifice, and costume, he appears extremely venerable and sad. The paintings are included in a later room of the exhibition that includes a video of Bowery having his face pierced as well as having a gash in his arm sutured shut, the result of a club brawl. The room also includes various prosthetic body parts that Bowery integrated into his later performances. The videos are unesthetic, ghoulish, and unnerving. They feel unnecessary in what is already a very chock-full exhibition. The pairing of these video works with the emotionally naked portraits is jarring. I can understand that perhaps the curators were aiming to exploit the creative tension between these disparate images, but it didn’t work for me.
The Tate Modern’s exhibition design is vibrant and energized. Many rooms are painted in saturated colors, with the first room covered in wallpaper designed by Bowery. Pounding music from audibly overlapping videos sets a heart-pounding pace. I emerged from the show feeling enlightened about the artist and his milieu, but somehow exhausted and melancholy. There is an undercurrent of sadness and self-absorption to both the life and the exhibition.
Leigh Bowery was a fire that burned brightly, but too briefly, dying of AIDS at age 33. Breaking barriers in performance, multimedia, performance art, and fashion, he clearly had an impact on later artists. The Tate’s exhibition is a time capsule of an era and a place and a complicated portrait of a complicated artist.
LEIGH BOWERY! The Tate Modern, London. Through August 31.
About the author: Melissa Stern is a New York City and Hudson Valley-based multimedia artist and journalist. She wrote about art and culture for The New York Press and CityArts for eight years and has been a contributing writer to Hyperallergic, Art Spiel and artcritical. Her work has been shown throughout the United States and is in the permanent collections of corporate and public institutions.
Image credits:
Stage photographer unknown. Photograph. From the Alternative Miss World ‘Earth” pageant. 1988. From the papers of Andrew Logan, De Monfort Univ.Special Collection, Leister. Photograph by Melissa Stern.
Fergus Greer. Session VII, Look 36. Photograph, c-print on aluminum. 1994. Courtesy of Michael Hoppen Gallery. Photograph by Melissa Stern.
Lucian Freud- Leigh Bowery. Oil on canvas.16.5 x 203/4 “.1991. Tate @ The Lucian Freud Archive/Bridgeman Images 2023. Photograph by Melissa Stern.
Leigh Bowery! Installation view. Photograph by Melissa Stern.
Leigh Bowery! Installation view. Photograph by Melissa Stern.