Leigh Bowery!

Exuberant exhibition at Tate Modern looking at the life and art of the performance artist Leigh Bowery.

I’ve always been intrigued by Bowery’s work, focused on his own body, since discovering the wonderful portraits of him by Lucien Freud and here it was laid out in rooms designed to look like his home and the clubs he ran and frequented.

There was an interesting mix of costumes, archive material and photographs and paintings of him so it represented both him as an artist and as a muse. You got a real sense of him as a person and of a group of friends.

It was interesting to have already done the Outlaws show at the Fashion and Textile Museum which covered similar territory. Like that show it was also a good one for people watching as many of the punters seemed to come from a similar world.

Closes 31 August 2025


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