Review – Leigh Bowery! at Tate Modern
April 12, 2025Review – The Leigh Bowery! exhibition at Tate Modern contains over 20 of his costumes, which were co-created with his partner, Nicola Rainbird (previously Bateman), and the expert corset-maker Mr Pearl. Some are original, and some re-created. It also shows film, photoshoots, paintings and interviews and there is music and snatches of dialogue in an exhibition designed to evoke the essence of the exhibitionist.
Controversial
Lots of people still hate this artist, fashion and costume designer, and originator of the club night Taboo, which is famous as the place where his contemporary Boy George developed his wildest looks and later created a musical in homage to. The hatred is probably because Bowery did push taboos. At first glance, you might assume it was because of his body and presentation. He was large, and his costumes made him even larger. His outfits and makeup were colourful but not pretty like Boy George’s.
Installation image of Leigh Bowery! at the Tate. (c) Tate. Photo Larina Annora Fernandes
Review – Leigh Bowery! at the Tate. (c) Tate. Photo Larina Annora Fernandes
Installation image of Leigh Bowery! at the Tate. (c) Tate. Photo Larina Annora Fernandes
Installation image of Leigh Bowery! at the Tate. (c) Tate. Photo Larina Annora Fernandes
But his personality could be grating and his performances genuinely shocking – for an AIDS benefit he gave himself an enema before going onstage and sprayed the liquid along with its accumulations, which I’ll leave you to imagine, onto the audience. He had originally intended to lie on the floor and be “a human fountain” but changed plans on the spot due to his costume not accommodating him. He was delighted at the result. I would have been appalled, especially given the nature of the illness and its transmission. He also specialised in embarrassing his friends, and could be racist and very b!tchy. He died young, at only 33, and I think many critics don’t consider him an artist at all, despite a stint in Anthony D’Offay’s gallery window, preening himself in front of a two-way mirror while passers-by looked on.
Review – Leigh Bowery!
Was he? Enough to have a Tate show? I’m not the only person to feel that this exhibition belongs more at the V&A, who do more fashion and personality oriented stuff, for example, Naomi Campbell, David Bowie. He was a Personality and he really wanted to be famous. Tate, who later in the year have a show pairing Picasso with a genderqueer performance artist, have granted him his wish. Maybe if he had lived longer he might now be considered a venerable old Enfant Terrible.
Like The Lore of Loverboy at Somerset House, there is a section of the exhibition designed to evoke a club-like-atmosphere. As well as that we get his home, a Stepney Green flat with Star Trek wallpaper. It lingers over his childhood and early development in the straight-laced suburbs of Sunshine, Australia and then his early years in London. We enjoy, of course, seeing the photos of him out of makeup, in average-Joe mufti.
Costumes
He worked with the dancer Michael Clark, designing costumes for his troupe as well as making his own clothes. But in general he wasn’t interested in designing or making clothes for others, the exception being his friend Sue Tilley, who was plus sized at a time where there wasn’t much choice in plus sized clothing.
Lucien Freud painted him nude thirteen times, and several of these paintings appear in the show. The painter did not expect it of someone whose clothing was so important to them, but his model stripped off, and revelled in his own skin, later pronouncing that “flesh is the most fabulous fabric”. It’s suggested that, because Bowery was dying from complications relating to AIDS, he wanted to record himself for posterity. Freud enjoyed his sessions and also painted many of Bowery’s friends and acquaintances, including Bowery’s bestie, Sue Tilley, but also Tilley’s brother’s girlfriend. He painted Bowery’s wife, Nicola Bateman (now Rainbird) too, both with and without him.
Review – Leigh Bowery! Collaborator Nicola Bateman
As I didn’t know that generation of club kids, I was always quite surprised by the always casual mention of Bateman as Bowery’s wife, since I always thought he was exclusively gay. He did love Nicola, who he performed with often and of course, it’s a very subversive, unexpected act for an out gay man to marry a woman. Obviously Bowery, who hated to be straightforward, had several explanations for it. It was for papers, he said, as he worried about being deported. It was so that Nicola could inherit his estate. (She has). It was their own private little art performance.
But he confided in a friend that he was scared she would leave him for another man. They were close, though he was often mean to her, humiliating and dominating her. She sewed the millions of sequins on his costumes, and they just clicked, although his friends didn’t really feel she fitted into that world either.
Their performances together were extraordinary. Most famous perhaps is the one where Bowery stomps onstage in a huge velvet ensemble, “pregnant” with Nicola and proceeds to give birth to her, complete with umbilical cord which he bites off to set her free. Others featured blood and vomit. Bodily fluids were some of Bowery’s favourite things.
Review – Leigh Bowery! – An Original
The exhibition is a sprawling show, maybe a bit lost in that big, multi-room space at Tate. I wanted it smaller, more tightly edited, more glowing. But go and see it, it s a record of a true original.
Leigh Bowery! is on at Tate Modern until 25th August. The exhibition is organised by Tate Modern in collaboration with Nicola Rainbird, Director and Owner of the Estate of Leigh Bowery. Curated by Fiontán Moran, Curator, International Art; Jessica Baxter, Assistant Curator, International Art, Tate Modern; Nicola Rainbird, Director and Owner of the Estate of Leigh Bowery; and Margery King, Artistic Advisor of the Estate of Leigh Bowery.
