Leigh Bowery

Performance artist, designer, model and nightclub impresario Leigh Bowery (1961–1994) was born in the Melbourne suburb of Sunshine. At high school, where he excelled in music, he became interested in punk. He studied fashion design for a while at RMIT before moving to London in 1980. There, he supported himself with a job at Burger King, but also started designing and making clothes which he sold at a stall at Kensington Market. Meanwhile, he was becoming something of a cult figure on the club scene, known for his outrageous 'looks' and skilfully tailored, albeit outlandish outfits. Boy George is quoted as describing Bowery as 'modern art on legs'. In 1983 he performed at London's Institute of Contemporary Arts; the following year, he travelled to New York and Japan to show his clothes. He first performed at a club in 1984; in 1985 he opened Taboo, in Leicester Square. Through the rest of the 1980s and the early 1990s his performances, both alone and in aggregations such as the Quality Street Wrappers, Raw Sewage and Minty, became increasingly extravagant, obscene and subversive. Credited with influencing Vivienne Westwood and John Galliano, Bowery was closely involved with London's fashion and art scenes, resulting in many portraits. Most famously, he posed for Lucian Freud, exposing his giant body unadorned for a number of memorable paintings.

Photographer Robyn Beeche met Bowery through her work in the fashion and creative scenes in London, where she moved in 1974 from Sydney. By the end of the decade she was working as a freelance photographer and documented many runway shows, including Westwood, Mary Quant, Vidal Sassoon and Zandra Rhodes. At the same time, she captured the spirit of events such as the Alternative Miss World pageant, in which Bowery and performers such as Divine appeared. For this portrait Beeche photographed her friend Bowery in his London flat, which was decorated with Star Trek wallpaper. Though he was largely unknown outside his own circle during his lifetime, Bowery's influence has been recognised since his death. Sydney's Museum of Contemporary Art mounted a survey exhibition of his work, Take a Bowery: The Art and (larger than life) Life of Leigh Bowery in 2003–2004, and in 2012–2013 the Kunsthalle Wien presented extravaganza: staging leigh bowery. In 2013–2014 he featured prominently in the Victoria and Albert Museum exhibition Club to Catwalk: London Fashion in the 1980s.

Gift of Claudia Hyles, Dr Christiane Lawin-Bruessel, Gwenda Matthews, Gael Newton, Anne O'Hehir, Susan Smith and Dominic Thomas in memory of our friend, Robyn Beeche 2016
© Robyn Beeche Foundation