Cathy's Art Diary

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 Reviews Times Guardian Telegraph Evening Standard  

Fun, vibrant exhibition at the Fashion and Textile Museum looking at the Taboo nightclub and the fashion of the people who went there. The club was opened by designer and performance artist, Leigh Bowery in 1985 with the dress code ‘dress as though your life depends on it, or don’t bother’. The show started by looking at the club and what those who went wore with sections on each of the designers and shops they favoured. I loved an installation which recreated a night in the club complete with DJ. It then looked at the designers who went to the club including Bowery himself and how their careers developed. There was a fun display upstairs on the pop stars of the early 80s who wore the fashions which brought back a lot of memories and another on the department store Browns which supported a lot if the designers. As with a lot of shows like this the best bit was my fellow punters, many of whom had been there, and literally got the t-shirt.   Closes 9 March 2024 Review Ti...

Glorious exhibition at the Fitzrovia Chapel celebrating the life and work of performance artist, Leigh Bowery. This show was so moving as the venue was the chapel of the Old Middlesex hospital where Bowery died on New Years Eve 1994. It’s gold mosaic walls and ceiling were a fabulous backdrop for the opulent costumes which were on show. The title comes from what he asked his friend Sue Tilley to tell people after he had died. I’d seen Bowery’s costumes in an art context before and they look amazing. If you are an art buff it is easy to just see Bowery now as one of Lucien Freud’s models so it is always good to be reminded of his own work. I loved the a pink tunic decorated with crystals and a very Cruella Deville short number worn as part of a weeklong performance at a gallery in 1988. The outfit shown here was made for a TV appearance. I don’t always have the patience for watching a video in an exhibition but in this case, like most other people who were there, I sunk down to w...