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| Leigh Bowery Pawlock, W. Available: http://www.pawlok.com/ pictures/werner-pawlok-photographer-leigh-bowery-1863 -1449.html |
Leigh Bowery was born on the 16th March 1961. He felt alienated from his conservative surroundings from a young age, his method of escape being to read British fashion magazines, through which he learned about London. In 1980, Bowery then moved to London where he became a regular at local clubs and was recognised for his eccentric outfits of which he had designed himself.
He was best known as a club promoter and nightlife fixture. In 1985 Leigh Bowery opened a nightclub with his friend Tony Gordan, which they named 'Taboo'. Taboo originated as an underground party, but it soon became the making of what clubs should be about. It was known for it's defiance of sexual convention and for being about excess. Taboo nights were all about dressing outrageously and having a great time. The more extremely a person dressed to go to Taboo would have meant that they were more likely to be given free entry and a free drink by Bowery.
These nights were all about dressing to impress, but a new romanticism came about through just getting ready to go out. People would spend hours getting ready to go out, and then wouldn't even make it to the club because they had spent so long dressing themselves up. It became a weirdly wonderful type of art form, through which it allowed anyone to become an artist.
As well as being a key character of the nightclub scene, Bowery also participated in performance arts as he was well connected with the theatre and arts circles. Whenever he performed, he would do so in either face paints or masks as he was always aiming to shock people wherever he could. Bowery also served as a model sometimes, posing nude for Lucien Freud a few times.
Leigh Bowery was the first person to have made a living being outrageously himself in a costume. However as soon as he took his clothes of for Freud's portraits of him, he suddenly became this new, private person, and this became a new kind of performance for him. Fashion was everything for Bowery, always dressing up in his own creations (which he saw as a performance in itself). He dressed up for an audiences reaction. Bowery's fashion looks continued into the daytime, with him still dressed so over the top that he looked threatening and confusing to passers by. Bowery took fashion in a completely new direction, being described as "his own best creation". His costumes and clothing that he made could have sold really well and it's been argued that he could have been a very successful fashion designer, had he not been unwilling to share his style.
Although Leigh Bowery had been identified as gay for many years, he married his friend Nicola Bateman in May 1994. Their wedding served more as an art performance between the 2 of them rather than a proposal of love. However after 7 short months of being married, Leigh Bowery died on New Years Eve of that year due to an AIDS related illness.
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| Leigh Bowery's various outfits Available: http://galleryhip.com/leigh-bowery.html http://monuque.blogspot.co.uk/2011/09/most-important-designers-in-history-of.html http://artblart.com/2013/01/27/exhibition-xtravaganza-staging-leigh-bowery-at-kunsthalle-wien-vienna/ |
References:
- Anon. (n.d.). The Legend of Leigh Bowery. Available: http://agnautacouture.com/2014/11/09/the-legend-of-leigh-bowery-part-one/. Last accessed 10th Nov 2014.
- The Legend of Leigh Bowery, 2002 [online video]. Directed by Charles Atlas. [viewed 10th November 2014]. Available from: http://agnautacouture.com/2014/11/09/the-legend-of-leigh-bowery-part-one/
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