リー・ボウェリー、彼の最も親しい友人や共同作業者によって思い出される

This article is taken from the Winter/Spring 2025 issue of Another Man. 

Bewitched by tales of fancy-dressed Blitz Kids, in 1980 Leigh Bowery packed up his sewing machine and quit the sleepy suburb of Sunshine, Australia for a bedsit in London. A day job flipping patties at Burger King funded the 19-year-old’s nocturnal voyages into the capital’s clubs and cruising grounds, where he found a home among an eclectic cast of badly behaved accomplices at the likes of Cha Chas and The Pink Panther. By 1985 he was ringleader of Taboo, a hedonistic clubnight off Leicester Square that became legendary for its withering door policy, uninhibited dance floor and toilet-cubicle debauchery. A glittery antidote to Thatcher’s Britain, Taboo was the Thursday night stage on which Bowery debuted his unforgettable looks, transforming his 16-stone frame into a living sculpture that was at turns surreal, cartoonish and disturbing.

Fuelled on vodka and gossip in his 11th floor East End council flat, he reinvented himself weekly as a giant pom-pom or a drippy egg, an enormous feathered bird with light-bulb ears or head-to-heels in PVC with a tree-trunk leg: “I’m interested in a jarring aesthetic and the tension between contradictions,” he told HQ magazine in 1994. “The idea that something can be frightening and heroic and pathetic all at the same time.” Crafted from curtain fabrics, foam, glue and sequins foraged from Watney Market or Brick Lane, Bowery’s ensembles challenged norms of identity and gender, and obliterated the lines between art and life.

“Bowery will be installing himself,” announced the Anthony d’Offay gallery of his first exhibition in 1988, conducted on a chaise longue opposite a one-way mirror. The artist also designed costumes for choreographer Michael Clark (head-high shoulderpads, bumless leotards), and fronted bands including Raw Sewage and Minty, throwing gleefully revolting shows that could feature vomit, urine and worse. And for all his sartorial ingenuity, he became equally renowned for being entirely unclothed, in paintings by Lucian Freud that exaggerated Bowery’s flesh to stupendous proportions.

Three decades after the nightlife icon’s premature death at 33 from an Aids-related illness, Tate Modern’s retrospective Leigh Bowery! celebrates his singular life, via film, photography, costume, music, and his many friends and collaborators. They cherish him for his relentless provocations and quicksilver mind, his elaborate lies and marathon telephone conversations, his electrifying looks and voracious appetites – and his genius for turning the act of going out into an art.

Michael Costiff, designer, artist, king of Kinky Gerlinky

“The minute Leigh turned up, there was a frisson of excitement and you knew you were in the right club. I met Leigh in 1981, when he worked at Burger King – he was just this lovely big Australian, thrilled to meet everybody. Leigh arrived at the end of the New Romantic period so all those looks had been done – Elizabeth I, a pirate, a nun, God … Leigh took it forward, to extremes. Once he started dressing up you couldn’t really talk to him, so it was important to see him out of drag. He’d come over to dinner and the mini cab company loved him – they called him ‘Big Bird’ and he’d keep them very entertained on the way home.

“I remember standing in a shop doorway on 14th Street in New York – Leigh was in a green sequinned outfit with lots of fake cleavage – trying to fix one of the light bulbs on his ears. He was constantly running out of bulbs or batteries, it was such a drama. Walking through the streets with Leigh in full sail was quite something. People were bewildered and they’d shout things. They didn’t know what to make of him with his lavish make-up and turquoise forehead and 15 pairs of eyelashes. He didn’t hold back.

“Walking through the streets with Leigh in full sail was quite something … They didn’t know what to make of him with his lavish make-up and turquoise forehead and 15 pairs of eyelashes. He didn’t hold back” – Michael Costiff

“Leigh was a big gossip; he loved to make up stories about people. I once happened to be sitting outside having coffee in Holland Park, and Leigh came by walking Lucian Freud’s dogs. Of course, the next day the story was that he’d caught me in the bushes and I’d pretended I’d lost my car keys – Holland Park was a notorious cruising ground. He also said my wife Gerlinde and I were sleeping with all the go-go boys from Kinky Gerlinky. I didn’t mind at all – it made us sound much more exciting.”

Nicola Rainbird, derformance partner and former wife of Bowery, director of the estate of Leigh Bowery

“I was warned about going to Taboo: ‘You don’t want to go there, it’s full of posers.’ I thought, actually, I think I do. I sat in the cocktail area and Leigh came over – he had orange spots on his face. He sat on my knee, took my hand and said, ‘My dear, you look simply gorgeous. Where did you come from?’ Then somebody threw a drink over him and he walked off. I trailed after him all evening – Leigh was everything I’d come to London for. At the end of the night he wrote down his phone number in lipstick and began putting me on the guest list. Taboo gave you the freedom to be as extreme as you wanted among kindred souls.

“We did the performance where Leigh ‘gave birth’ to me at Kinky Gerlinky first. It was inspired by the John Waters film Female Trouble. We were both full of adrenaline – Leigh was dressed up as Divine, and I was packed up naked in a harness under his outfit, upside down, my face right next to his willy. I was wearing a bald cap and bloodied up all over, with a string of chipolatas that we had made specially in Smithfield Market to resemble an umbilical cord. There was total shock in the audience when I came out. Our wedding day at Bow registry office – on Friday 13th – was also, as Leigh put it, ‘a little art performance between the two of us’. He got in a bit of a bad mood after the wedding and buggered off to meet Richard Torry because they were writing songs for Minty. The rest of us went to Angus Steakhouse and got pissed.

“Leigh would love this Tate retrospective; he always wanted to be famous and since his death, I’ve done everything I can to preserve his costumes because I thought, the world will catch up one day“ – Nicola Rainbird

“When I picture Leigh now, I think of me in the sitting room of his flat on Commercial Road, sewing on sequins – the bugle beads took six days of solid work from ten in the morning till two at night with hardly a break. And there’s him posing deviously in the doorway behind me, waiting for me to spot him in the mirror – there were mirrors all over his flat. Soon as I’d clock him, he’d spin and walk out. Leigh would love this Tate retrospective; he always wanted to be famous and since his death, I’ve done everything I can to preserve his costumes because I thought, the world will catch up one day. I’m just really glad TikTok wasn’t available when Leigh was alive, because he was a very mischievous person – and a total liar. He would have set up his friends something chronic.”

Charles Atlas, filmmaker and video artist

“Leigh was introduced to me by Michael Clark at Heaven – Michael liked designers who had a strong point of view that he would have to adapt to, and Leigh’s designs were very challenging to dance in. Leigh would always stay with me in New York – he was the toast of the town – and when I was in London I’d stay at his place on Commercial Road, with the Star Trek wallpaper.

“If you watch my film Mrs. Peanut Visits New York that’s Leigh coming out of my house on 14th Street, and Teach we shot there too, with Leigh lip-syncing to Aretha Franklin’s Take a Look. I told him to bring his fake lips and we did it in my living room – his cheeks were pierced and he safety-pinned fake lips over his own. He used to do these ‘glitter gloves’ – put crazy glue on his hands, dip them in glitter and go out to a club. I lived on the third floor and for years afterwards, they just couldn’t get the glitter trail off the steps.

“I made my documentary, The Legend of Leigh Bowery, because I read several obituaries when he passed away claiming he was just a club show-off. I wanted to prove that he was an artist, because that’s absolutely what he was” – Charles Atlas

“I found this interview he did with Lady Bunny: ‘Tell me about your relationship with dear Charlie.’ ‘Well, he discovered me. I’ve been in a number of his films. We have very much the director-star type of relationship.’ That made me laugh. When he was in front of the camera, Leigh was full-on. He was the most fun, the most interesting, and the most challenging person to work with. Even at the time, people borrowed or stole his ideas and I still see his influence today. I made my documentary, The Legend of Leigh Bowery, because I read several obituaries when he passed away claiming he was just a club show-off. I wanted to prove that he was an artist, because that’s absolutely what he was.”

Andrew Logan, artist and founder of Alternative Miss World

“Leigh was ambitious, charming and he lived for the moment. He entered Alternative Miss World in 1985 dressed as a cowboy, shooting a toy gun, but at the back of this outfit was a supermarket trolley – and he was on roller skates. Of course he couldn’t roller skate, so it was wonderfully chaotic, and I loved the way he used these familiar – but suddenly in that context unfamiliar – objects. I’d seen him and Trojan painted blue before, like Krishna, but I think Alternative Miss World was a groundbreaking moment for him.

“He entered Alternative Miss World in 1985 dressed as a cowboy, shooting a toy gun, but at the back of this outfit was a supermarket trolley – and he was on roller skates. Of course he couldn’t roller skate, so it was wonderfully chaotic” – Andrew Logan

“The next year we were due to hold it at the Chislehurst Caves but the police closed it – it was the height of HIV and the locals believed people would go to the toilets in the caves and the HIV virus was going to travel along the pipes into their houses. The ignorance was extraordinary then. So Brixton Academy sweetly said they were free, and Leigh appeared with this white face and big black lips. But my favourite performance was that first one because it was the seeds of an artwork that was just beginning, almost as extraordinary as later when he was on another wavelength, with his head as a drippy egg. And then, this man who dressed in such extravagant ways, at the end of his life became known for being absolutely naked in a painting by Lucian Freud. Certain people end up legends and Leigh is one.”

Rachel Auburn, designer, DJ and music producer

“We’d seen each other around Portobello Road – Leigh was difficult not to notice – but we met at my stall in Kensington Market. He was wearing shirts made from curtain fabric then with really exaggerated pointy collars – very country Englishman. He could pass for an Aussie rugby player with his build. He had a flat on Ladbroke Grove above a video shop, and he invited me round for a ramshackle dinner party that involved various other characters including a starstruck girl called Lorraine, who is no longer alive sadly. Leigh had an obsession with Divine, and this girl looked a bit like Edith Massey, the Egg Lady from the early John Waters movies. Leigh was doing her make-up and she was being made fun of really, but I think she liked the attention.

“Leigh and I used to get the ferry to Amsterdam and sit in the library of the Rijksmuseum to look through art books we couldn’t afford to buy. There was a group of Viennese performance artists who were into self-mutilation that Leigh was fascinated by, particularly one called Rudolf Schwarzkogler. So he was always interested in body transformation, and maybe that time was sowing the seeds. I remember he turned up in my studio and he’d switched from a look which was very Vivienne Westwood meets Rei Kawakubo, Buffalo cowboy meets the Artful Dodger, to a blue face and plastic PVC cap with sequins, stars, glitter and lurex – and silver platforms made by a cobbler in Camden. I dared him to walk down All Saints Road, which was very run down then, and the centre of the drug dealing business. And he did, he braved it.

“Taboo was a group of people pushing the boundaries, but it wasn’t precious. You had a look, but you also got thrown around the dance floor by Leigh, who loved swinging people over his shoulder in a fireman’s lift” – Rachel Auburn

“Leigh and I just clicked, and it did become sexual – I had so much sex with him, and with Trojan! Obviously they were gay so it was never anything more than sex as a pastime. Taboo was a group of people pushing the boundaries, but it wasn’t precious. You had a look, but you also got thrown around the dance floor by Leigh, who loved swinging people over his shoulder in a fireman’s lift.

“Things go in cycles, and particularly now with identity politics, Leigh’s seen as one of the pioneers, expressing himself so provocatively and creatively. He’s a role model in a way, and an inspiration to anyone seeking the nerve to express themselves. People borrow continually from the inventive looks he came up with – it’s a never-ending library.”

Sue Tilley, artist, artist’s model and writer

“I lived in a big squat house in Kentish Town, and I’d met Steve Luscombe out of the pop group Blancmange, who introduced me to Leigh. He had a lovely, smiley face and we became friends straightaway. We were brought up the same – religious family, proper, nice parents who were married. Leigh always wrote nice little thank you letters. We were both chubby – we had that in common too. Leigh wasn’t actually as big as you thought, he just had so much personality, it all burst out of him and made him take up so much space.

“The first night of Taboo I was in hospital. Leigh came the next day and climbed in the hospital bed with me and told me all about it. He was such a good friend. He’d make me outfits to wear to work, and gave all the dresses names. I helped with his drippy heads – I was an avid watcher of Blue Peter, so I mixed in Copydex to make the paint stick – then you could peel off the drips at the end of the night. With the later outfits we couldn’t have a proper chat – he was either too high up on platforms or couldn’t hear me, or had something over his eyes. He used to say, ‘I wish I didn’t have to go out dressed like this, I wouldn’t have to drink’; the outfits were so painful he had to drink vodka to wear them.

“I get tearful thinking about it … Everything in my life that is good, I can trace back to meeting Leigh” – Sue Tilley

“I preferred our daytime outings. There’s nothing Leigh loved more than going to Sainsbury’s in Watney Market or to the cinema – I’d make a box of flapjacks and we’d see three films in a row. We’d talk for hours on the phone – sometimes we’d sit with the phone to our ears watching a TV programme without speaking. I get tearful thinking about it. Leigh just made life more interesting. I can’t tell you the excitement I felt going to Danceteria in New York with him. Or to Coney Island, where this old woman kept asking us for Valium and we got kicked off the log flumes. Everything in my life that is good, I can trace back to meeting Leigh.”

Bella Freud, designer

“You saw Leigh in a club and you wanted to be in his orbit, but it was like being in the orbit of a geological phenomenon: How do I get near him? It was great being kissed on the cheek by this gigantic, magnificent figure with paint dripping down his head. You felt like you’d been touched by God or by art, but it was also such lighthearted fun. The designer Rifat Ozbek told me they’d have these hours-long phone calls, and then suddenly Leigh would say ‘Bored now, bye!’ and slam down the phone.

“I got to know Leigh when he was sitting for my dad. He would wear his off-duty wig, which was the hairstyle you imagine the favoured child would have, these golden curls. He’d be in casual clothes like a builder, and it was such an extreme difference it was almost more disturbing. He and my dad used to go to the River Cafe together and Leigh began to develop an interest in delicious, refined foods – I’ve never forgotten him telling me ‘the poached pears with cream are awfully good.’ An ordinary comment, instead of his existential banter, seemed somehow more controversial than anything.

“Lucian really loved him. One of the very few times I ever heard my father cry was when Leigh died. We spoke on the phone and his voice broke. It was a devastating loss” – Bella Freud

“The other day Michael Clark said Lucian and Leigh were made for each other and it’s true: they totally got each other. They were both incredibly entertained and stimulated by each other’s anarchic attitude and intelligence. Leigh was such a fast thinker and he made use of the world, of whatever he could find. When he started sitting for Lucian, he was hungry for knowledge and he just devoured it and took on even more dimensions. He was remarkable in every single guise that he occupied. And it was great watching my father be with Leigh. Lucian really loved him. One of the very few times I ever heard my father cry was when Leigh died. We spoke on the phone and his voice broke. It was a devastating loss. I remember when one of the last big paintings he did of Leigh was being shown at the Dulwich Picture Gallery, Leigh was in hospital but he came out for the private view. He had a drip on a wheelie stand – he didn’t want to miss anything. People were saying, ‘When will you be out?’ No one really knew or wanted to think that it could be as awful as him dying.”

Dick Jewell, artist and filmmaker

“This retrospective of Leigh is long overdue; he was one of a kind. My film What’s Your Reaction to the Show? was shot at his exhibition at the Anthony d’Offay gallery in 1988. I’d been wanting to make a film about people’s reaction to art shows and because Leigh had never exhibited himself in an art context, it was ideal – anybody’s reaction was going to be pure, not what had been written by critics or what they were expected to say. Leigh would do a two-hour performance each day behind a one-way mirror, with the sounds of the street playing and different aromas – marshmallow, banana – were released.

“This retrospective of Leigh is long overdue; he was one of a kind” – Dick Jewell

“I stood outside getting people’s opinions, from the head of the Royal Academy, to Boy George, to the art-going public, to the cleaner, and they ranged from love to hate. Some said it was absolutely awful, others said it was the best thing they’d ever seen and came every single day. Some were disappointed he didn’t do a shit or piss on the floor. Some would equate it with the Red Light District in Amsterdam. Some totally understood it as a moving picture, a portrait, and equated it to painting. John Maybury said, ‘Just what Leigh’s always wanted: an audience behind his bathroom mirror.’”

Richard Torry, artist and musician, co-founder of Minty

“Leigh was still sleeping under Rachel Auburn’s pattern-cutting table when I met him. He didn’t have the shocking, party monster look yet. In the daytime, he looked more like Benny Hill. I met him at Susanne Bartsch’s New London in New York show, with Andrew Logan, BodyMap, John Richmond, Rachel and others. Leigh got orders from Barneys there, but he didn’t want to be a commercial designer, he wanted big statements.

“We formed Minty together in 1993. Leigh came up with the name from an old theatrical expression about a ‘minty old queen’ that goes against the grain and always interjects something a bit off. We’d play drawing and storytelling Consequences, where you fold the paper over, to make up song ideas – some of them should be in the Tate retrospective. I remember an early show at the Barley Mow in Shoreditch, all the YBA artists in this tiny little pub, and Lucian Freud came. The audience was completely open, they dropped all defences – which was surprising because just a year or so before he’d done his famous enema show. Then at the Hoxton art fair Fete Worse Than Death in 1994, Malcolm McLaren was in the audience and said he wanted to manage us.

“There was the occasional accident – I remember a mini show in Holland where Leigh smashed through a plate of sugar glass and got cuts all over his body, and he shouted to shut the curtains because he was bleeding” – Richard Torry

“There was the occasional accident – I remember a mini show in Holland where Leigh smashed through a plate of sugar glass and got cuts all over his body, and he shouted to shut the curtains because he was bleeding. I went to help him and he said, ‘How stupid of me, I should have stood there and let the blood drip down.’ Our last gig was at the Freedom Café in Wardour Street. We were booked to do a residency but Westminster Council shut it down after the first night because of the nudity. Leigh wasn’t feeling well that evening. He thought he had flu, but he went into hospital soon after.”

Princess Julia, DJ, writer, original Blitz Kid

“I went most weeks to Taboo because I shared a flat with Jeffrey Hinton, one of the resident DJs. The scene was really small and we all knew each other. The club had a faux chicness to it; a grand staircase, smoky mirrors, a sunken dance floor. The music was a mixture of Hi-NRG, camp Euro favourites and mixtapes the DJs created – Michael Clark was a regular on the podiums, and David LaChapelle was one of our go-go boys. There was a pull-down screen where Jeffrey played the scratch videos he edited onto VHS every week. And of course it had space for Leigh to show his seminal looks. I remember the big spots all over him, and Leigh explaining to me – because these looks weren’t without social conscience – that they represented Kaposi’s Sarcoma, that was commonly a side effect of HIV. It was really the early days of that. At Taboo, Leigh really stepped up the looks and working with Michael Clark elevated the costumes – the arse-out look, the big floppy dandy caps, a lot of inventive make-up. Leigh became the masterpiece, the object of art, experimenting with body dysmorphia, shapes and contortions, and foamy mask-like creations.

“MDMA was coming through and there was a guy at Taboo who always dished it out from a big bag of white powder. There was acid, and heroin was on the way, so that was the mood. It was hedonistic but Leigh mainly liked to drink. The door was run by Mark Vaultier and Trojan – Mark liked that old trick of holding a hand mirror in front of the person and saying, ‘Would you let yourself in?’ I had a stint in the cloakroom with Malcolm Duffy but we were tripping on acid and a Katharine Hamnett coat went missing, so we got fired.

“I saw many of his performances – including the enema show at the Fridge in Brixton, about which: there were complaints. If you were in the front row, you got splashed” – Princess Julia

“I think a pivotal moment was Leigh’s installation at Anthony d’Offay gallery. You knew that show was history-making. It was glorious to see Leigh given a new status because what he was doing was art. His looks were statements, personal outpourings and explanations of different moods. Around this time Leigh’s day look was quite astounding – equally as confrontational in its way. He’d wear a clog over the top of a pair of trainers, a double-decker shoe-within-a-shoe, which I believe was an invention of Mae West. He had these mossy-looking wigs he’d cut all the hair off so it was just the netting, quite ratty, and he’d wear a sweat top with the remnants of yesterday’s dinner down the front. There was something really pervy about it and that was absolutely on purpose. He liked to fuck with people’s minds. That was his cruising look as well.

“I saw many of his performances – including the enema show at the Fridge in Brixton, about which: there were complaints. If you were in the front row, you got splashed. And in the early 90s, I went to the play The Homosexual in King’s Cross with Leigh as ‘Madame Garbo’. He could play the piano, he could act, he could be a club clown. He moved through life experimenting with all these different practices and it makes you ask what he would be doing now. This Tate retrospective though, would be the dream. And I wonder if it will uncover anything, because in one sense Leigh was quite private, something of an enigma. Often when you’re flamboyant like that, you use make-up and clothing as a barrier or a mask or a way of reinventing yourself. So I wonder, how much did any of us really know Leigh Bowery?”

This article features in the Winter/Spring 2025 issue of Another Man, which is on sale internationally now. Leigh Bowery! will go on show at Tate Modern in London from 27 February – 31 August 2025.

This article is taken from the Winter/Spring 2025 issue of Another Man. 

Bewitched by tales of fancy-dressed Blitz Kids, in 1980 Leigh Bowery packed up his sewing machine and quit the sleepy suburb of Sunshine, Australia for a bedsit in London. A day job flipping patties at Burger King funded the 19-year-old’s nocturnal voyages into the capital’s clubs and cruising grounds, where he found a home among an eclectic cast of badly behaved accomplices at the likes of Cha Chas and The Pink Panther. By 1985 he was ringleader of Taboo, a hedonistic clubnight off Leicester Square that became legendary for its withering door policy, uninhibited dance floor and toilet-cubicle debauchery. A glittery antidote to Thatcher’s Britain, Taboo was the Thursday night stage on which Bowery debuted his unforgettable looks, transforming his 16-stone frame into a living sculpture that was at turns surreal, cartoonish and disturbing.

Fuelled on vodka and gossip in his 11th floor East End council flat, he reinvented himself weekly as a giant pom-pom or a drippy egg, an enormous feathered bird with light-bulb ears or head-to-heels in PVC with a tree-trunk leg: “I’m interested in a jarring aesthetic and the tension between contradictions,” he told HQ magazine in 1994. “The idea that something can be frightening and heroic and pathetic all at the same time.” Crafted from curtain fabrics, foam, glue and sequins foraged from Watney Market or Brick Lane, Bowery’s ensembles challenged norms of identity and gender, and obliterated the lines between art and life.

“Bowery will be installing himself,” announced the Anthony d’Offay gallery of his first exhibition in 1988, conducted on a chaise longue opposite a one-way mirror. The artist also designed costumes for choreographer Michael Clark (head-high shoulderpads, bumless leotards), and fronted bands including Raw Sewage and Minty, throwing gleefully revolting shows that could feature vomit, urine and worse. And for all his sartorial ingenuity, he became equally renowned for being entirely unclothed, in paintings by Lucian Freud that exaggerated Bowery’s flesh to stupendous proportions.

Three decades after the nightlife icon’s premature death at 33 from an Aids-related illness, Tate Modern’s retrospective Leigh Bowery! celebrates his singular life, via film, photography, costume, music, and his many friends and collaborators. They cherish him for his relentless provocations and quicksilver mind, his elaborate lies and marathon telephone conversations, his electrifying looks and voracious appetites – and his genius for turning the act of going out into an art.

Michael Costiff, designer, artist, king of Kinky Gerlinky

“The minute Leigh turned up, there was a frisson of excitement and you knew you were in the right club. I met Leigh in 1981, when he worked at Burger King – he was just this lovely big Australian, thrilled to meet everybody. Leigh arrived at the end of the New Romantic period so all those looks had been done – Elizabeth I, a pirate, a nun, God … Leigh took it forward, to extremes. Once he started dressing up you couldn’t really talk to him, so it was important to see him out of drag. He’d come over to dinner and the mini cab company loved him – they called him ‘Big Bird’ and he’d keep them very entertained on the way home.

“I remember standing in a shop doorway on 14th Street in New York – Leigh was in a green sequinned outfit with lots of fake cleavage – trying to fix one of the light bulbs on his ears. He was constantly running out of bulbs or batteries, it was such a drama. Walking through the streets with Leigh in full sail was quite something. People were bewildered and they’d shout things. They didn’t know what to make of him with his lavish make-up and turquoise forehead and 15 pairs of eyelashes. He didn’t hold back.

“Walking through the streets with Leigh in full sail was quite something … They didn’t know what to make of him with his lavish make-up and turquoise forehead and 15 pairs of eyelashes. He didn’t hold back” – Michael Costiff

“Leigh was a big gossip; he loved to make up stories about people. I once happened to be sitting outside having coffee in Holland Park, and Leigh came by walking Lucian Freud’s dogs. Of course, the next day the story was that he’d caught me in the bushes and I’d pretended I’d lost my car keys – Holland Park was a notorious cruising ground. He also said my wife Gerlinde and I were sleeping with all the go-go boys from Kinky Gerlinky. I didn’t mind at all – it made us sound much more exciting.”

Nicola Rainbird, derformance partner and former wife of Bowery, director of the estate of Leigh Bowery

“I was warned about going to Taboo: ‘You don’t want to go there, it’s full of posers.’ I thought, actually, I think I do. I sat in the cocktail area and Leigh came over – he had orange spots on his face. He sat on my knee, took my hand and said, ‘My dear, you look simply gorgeous. Where did you come from?’ Then somebody threw a drink over him and he walked off. I trailed after him all evening – Leigh was everything I’d come to London for. At the end of the night he wrote down his phone number in lipstick and began putting me on the guest list. Taboo gave you the freedom to be as extreme as you wanted among kindred souls.

“We did the performance where Leigh ‘gave birth’ to me at Kinky Gerlinky first. It was inspired by the John Waters film Female Trouble. We were both full of adrenaline – Leigh was dressed up as Divine, and I was packed up naked in a harness under his outfit, upside down, my face right next to his willy. I was wearing a bald cap and bloodied up all over, with a string of chipolatas that we had made specially in Smithfield Market to resemble an umbilical cord. There was total shock in the audience when I came out. Our wedding day at Bow registry office – on Friday 13th – was also, as Leigh put it, ‘a little art performance between the two of us’. He got in a bit of a bad mood after the wedding and buggered off to meet Richard Torry because they were writing songs for Minty. The rest of us went to Angus Steakhouse and got pissed.

“Leigh would love this Tate retrospective; he always wanted to be famous and since his death, I’ve done everything I can to preserve his costumes because I thought, the world will catch up one day“ – Nicola Rainbird

“When I picture Leigh now, I think of me in the sitting room of his flat on Commercial Road, sewing on sequins – the bugle beads took six days of solid work from ten in the morning till two at night with hardly a break. And there’s him posing deviously in the doorway behind me, waiting for me to spot him in the mirror – there were mirrors all over his flat. Soon as I’d clock him, he’d spin and walk out. Leigh would love this Tate retrospective; he always wanted to be famous and since his death, I’ve done everything I can to preserve his costumes because I thought, the world will catch up one day. I’m just really glad TikTok wasn’t available when Leigh was alive, because he was a very mischievous person – and a total liar. He would have set up his friends something chronic.”

Charles Atlas, filmmaker and video artist

“Leigh was introduced to me by Michael Clark at Heaven – Michael liked designers who had a strong point of view that he would have to adapt to, and Leigh’s designs were very challenging to dance in. Leigh would always stay with me in New York – he was the toast of the town – and when I was in London I’d stay at his place on Commercial Road, with the Star Trek wallpaper.

“If you watch my film Mrs. Peanut Visits New York that’s Leigh coming out of my house on 14th Street, and Teach we shot there too, with Leigh lip-syncing to Aretha Franklin’s Take a Look. I told him to bring his fake lips and we did it in my living room – his cheeks were pierced and he safety-pinned fake lips over his own. He used to do these ‘glitter gloves’ – put crazy glue on his hands, dip them in glitter and go out to a club. I lived on the third floor and for years afterwards, they just couldn’t get the glitter trail off the steps.

“I made my documentary, The Legend of Leigh Bowery, because I read several obituaries when he passed away claiming he was just a club show-off. I wanted to prove that he was an artist, because that’s absolutely what he was” – Charles Atlas

“I found this interview he did with Lady Bunny: ‘Tell me about your relationship with dear Charlie.’ ‘Well, he discovered me. I’ve been in a number of his films. We have very much the director-star type of relationship.’ That made me laugh. When he was in front of the camera, Leigh was full-on. He was the most fun, the most interesting, and the most challenging person to work with. Even at the time, people borrowed or stole his ideas and I still see his influence today. I made my documentary, The Legend of Leigh Bowery, because I read several obituaries when he passed away claiming he was just a club show-off. I wanted to prove that he was an artist, because that’s absolutely what he was.”

Andrew Logan, artist and founder of Alternative Miss World

“Leigh was ambitious, charming and he lived for the moment. He entered Alternative Miss World in 1985 dressed as a cowboy, shooting a toy gun, but at the back of this outfit was a supermarket trolley – and he was on roller skates. Of course he couldn’t roller skate, so it was wonderfully chaotic, and I loved the way he used these familiar – but suddenly in that context unfamiliar – objects. I’d seen him and Trojan painted blue before, like Krishna, but I think Alternative Miss World was a groundbreaking moment for him.

“He entered Alternative Miss World in 1985 dressed as a cowboy, shooting a toy gun, but at the back of this outfit was a supermarket trolley – and he was on roller skates. Of course he couldn’t roller skate, so it was wonderfully chaotic” – Andrew Logan

“The next year we were due to hold it at the Chislehurst Caves but the police closed it – it was the height of HIV and the locals believed people would go to the toilets in the caves and the HIV virus was going to travel along the pipes into their houses. The ignorance was extraordinary then. So Brixton Academy sweetly said they were free, and Leigh appeared with this white face and big black lips. But my favourite performance was that first one because it was the seeds of an artwork that was just beginning, almost as extraordinary as later when he was on another wavelength, with his head as a drippy egg. And then, this man who dressed in such extravagant ways, at the end of his life became known for being absolutely naked in a painting by Lucian Freud. Certain people end up legends and Leigh is one.”

Rachel Auburn, designer, DJ and music producer

“We’d seen each other around Portobello Road – Leigh was difficult not to notice – but we met at my stall in Kensington Market. He was wearing shirts made from curtain fabric then with really exaggerated pointy collars – very country Englishman. He could pass for an Aussie rugby player with his build. He had a flat on Ladbroke Grove above a video shop, and he invited me round for a ramshackle dinner party that involved various other characters including a starstruck girl called Lorraine, who is no longer alive sadly. Leigh had an obsession with Divine, and this girl looked a bit like Edith Massey, the Egg Lady from the early John Waters movies. Leigh was doing her make-up and she was being made fun of really, but I think she liked the attention.

“Leigh and I used to get the ferry to Amsterdam and sit in the library of the Rijksmuseum to look through art books we couldn’t afford to buy. There was a group of Viennese performance artists who were into self-mutilation that Leigh was fascinated by, particularly one called Rudolf Schwarzkogler. So he was always interested in body transformation, and maybe that time was sowing the seeds. I remember he turned up in my studio and he’d switched from a look which was very Vivienne Westwood meets Rei Kawakubo, Buffalo cowboy meets the Artful Dodger, to a blue face and plastic PVC cap with sequins, stars, glitter and lurex – and silver platforms made by a cobbler in Camden. I dared him to walk down All Saints Road, which was very run down then, and the centre of the drug dealing business. And he did, he braved it.

“Taboo was a group of people pushing the boundaries, but it wasn’t precious. You had a look, but you also got thrown around the dance floor by Leigh, who loved swinging people over his shoulder in a fireman’s lift” – Rachel Auburn

“Leigh and I just clicked, and it did become sexual – I had so much sex with him, and with Trojan! Obviously they were gay so it was never anything more than sex as a pastime. Taboo was a group of people pushing the boundaries, but it wasn’t precious. You had a look, but you also got thrown around the dance floor by Leigh, who loved swinging people over his shoulder in a fireman’s lift.

“Things go in cycles, and particularly now with identity politics, Leigh’s seen as one of the pioneers, expressing himself so provocatively and creatively. He’s a role model in a way, and an inspiration to anyone seeking the nerve to express themselves. People borrow continually from the inventive looks he came up with – it’s a never-ending library.”

Sue Tilley, artist, artist’s model and writer

“I lived in a big squat house in Kentish Town, and I’d met Steve Luscombe out of the pop group Blancmange, who introduced me to Leigh. He had a lovely, smiley face and we became friends straightaway. We were brought up the same – religious family, proper, nice parents who were married. Leigh always wrote nice little thank you letters. We were both chubby – we had that in common too. Leigh wasn’t actually as big as you thought, he just had so much personality, it all burst out of him and made him take up so much space.

“The first night of Taboo I was in hospital. Leigh came the next day and climbed in the hospital bed with me and told me all about it. He was such a good friend. He’d make me outfits to wear to work, and gave all the dresses names. I helped with his drippy heads – I was an avid watcher of Blue Peter, so I mixed in Copydex to make the paint stick – then you could peel off the drips at the end of the night. With the later outfits we couldn’t have a proper chat – he was either too high up on platforms or couldn’t hear me, or had something over his eyes. He used to say, ‘I wish I didn’t have to go out dressed like this, I wouldn’t have to drink’; the outfits were so painful he had to drink vodka to wear them.

“I get tearful thinking about it … Everything in my life that is good, I can trace back to meeting Leigh” – Sue Tilley

“I preferred our daytime outings. There’s nothing Leigh loved more than going to Sainsbury’s in Watney Market or to the cinema – I’d make a box of flapjacks and we’d see three films in a row. We’d talk for hours on the phone – sometimes we’d sit with the phone to our ears watching a TV programme without speaking. I get tearful thinking about it. Leigh just made life more interesting. I can’t tell you the excitement I felt going to Danceteria in New York with him. Or to Coney Island, where this old woman kept asking us for Valium and we got kicked off the log flumes. Everything in my life that is good, I can trace back to meeting Leigh.”

Bella Freud, designer

“You saw Leigh in a club and you wanted to be in his orbit, but it was like being in the orbit of a geological phenomenon: How do I get near him? It was great being kissed on the cheek by this gigantic, magnificent figure with paint dripping down his head. You felt like you’d been touched by God or by art, but it was also such lighthearted fun. The designer Rifat Ozbek told me they’d have these hours-long phone calls, and then suddenly Leigh would say ‘Bored now, bye!’ and slam down the phone.

“I got to know Leigh when he was sitting for my dad. He would wear his off-duty wig, which was the hairstyle you imagine the favoured child would have, these golden curls. He’d be in casual clothes like a builder, and it was such an extreme difference it was almost more disturbing. He and my dad used to go to the River Cafe together and Leigh began to develop an interest in delicious, refined foods – I’ve never forgotten him telling me ‘the poached pears with cream are awfully good.’ An ordinary comment, instead of his existential banter, seemed somehow more controversial than anything.

“Lucian really loved him. One of the very few times I ever heard my father cry was when Leigh died. We spoke on the phone and his voice broke. It was a devastating loss” – Bella Freud

“The other day Michael Clark said Lucian and Leigh were made for each other and it’s true: they totally got each other. They were both incredibly entertained and stimulated by each other’s anarchic attitude and intelligence. Leigh was such a fast thinker and he made use of the world, of whatever he could find. When he started sitting for Lucian, he was hungry for knowledge and he just devoured it and took on even more dimensions. He was remarkable in every single guise that he occupied. And it was great watching my father be with Leigh. Lucian really loved him. One of the very few times I ever heard my father cry was when Leigh died. We spoke on the phone and his voice broke. It was a devastating loss. I remember when one of the last big paintings he did of Leigh was being shown at the Dulwich Picture Gallery, Leigh was in hospital but he came out for the private view. He had a drip on a wheelie stand – he didn’t want to miss anything. People were saying, ‘When will you be out?’ No one really knew or wanted to think that it could be as awful as him dying.”

Dick Jewell, artist and filmmaker

“This retrospective of Leigh is long overdue; he was one of a kind. My film What’s Your Reaction to the Show? was shot at his exhibition at the Anthony d’Offay gallery in 1988. I’d been wanting to make a film about people’s reaction to art shows and because Leigh had never exhibited himself in an art context, it was ideal – anybody’s reaction was going to be pure, not what had been written by critics or what they were expected to say. Leigh would do a two-hour performance each day behind a one-way mirror, with the sounds of the street playing and different aromas – marshmallow, banana – were released.

“This retrospective of Leigh is long overdue; he was one of a kind” – Dick Jewell

“I stood outside getting people’s opinions, from the head of the Royal Academy, to Boy George, to the art-going public, to the cleaner, and they ranged from love to hate. Some said it was absolutely awful, others said it was the best thing they’d ever seen and came every single day. Some were disappointed he didn’t do a shit or piss on the floor. Some would equate it with the Red Light District in Amsterdam. Some totally understood it as a moving picture, a portrait, and equated it to painting. John Maybury said, ‘Just what Leigh’s always wanted: an audience behind his bathroom mirror.’”

Richard Torry, artist and musician, co-founder of Minty

“Leigh was still sleeping under Rachel Auburn’s pattern-cutting table when I met him. He didn’t have the shocking, party monster look yet. In the daytime, he looked more like Benny Hill. I met him at Susanne Bartsch’s New London in New York show, with Andrew Logan, BodyMap, John Richmond, Rachel and others. Leigh got orders from Barneys there, but he didn’t want to be a commercial designer, he wanted big statements.

“We formed Minty together in 1993. Leigh came up with the name from an old theatrical expression about a ‘minty old queen’ that goes against the grain and always interjects something a bit off. We’d play drawing and storytelling Consequences, where you fold the paper over, to make up song ideas – some of them should be in the Tate retrospective. I remember an early show at the Barley Mow in Shoreditch, all the YBA artists in this tiny little pub, and Lucian Freud came. The audience was completely open, they dropped all defences – which was surprising because just a year or so before he’d done his famous enema show. Then at the Hoxton art fair Fete Worse Than Death in 1994, Malcolm McLaren was in the audience and said he wanted to manage us.

“There was the occasional accident – I remember a mini show in Holland where Leigh smashed through a plate of sugar glass and got cuts all over his body, and he shouted to shut the curtains because he was bleeding” – Richard Torry

“There was the occasional accident – I remember a mini show in Holland where Leigh smashed through a plate of sugar glass and got cuts all over his body, and he shouted to shut the curtains because he was bleeding. I went to help him and he said, ‘How stupid of me, I should have stood there and let the blood drip down.’ Our last gig was at the Freedom Café in Wardour Street. We were booked to do a residency but Westminster Council shut it down after the first night because of the nudity. Leigh wasn’t feeling well that evening. He thought he had flu, but he went into hospital soon after.”

Princess Julia, DJ, writer, original Blitz Kid

“I went most weeks to Taboo because I shared a flat with Jeffrey Hinton, one of the resident DJs. The scene was really small and we all knew each other. The club had a faux chicness to it; a grand staircase, smoky mirrors, a sunken dance floor. The music was a mixture of Hi-NRG, camp Euro favourites and mixtapes the DJs created – Michael Clark was a regular on the podiums, and David LaChapelle was one of our go-go boys. There was a pull-down screen where Jeffrey played the scratch videos he edited onto VHS every week. And of course it had space for Leigh to show his seminal looks. I remember the big spots all over him, and Leigh explaining to me – because these looks weren’t without social conscience – that they represented Kaposi’s Sarcoma, that was commonly a side effect of HIV. It was really the early days of that. At Taboo, Leigh really stepped up the looks and working with Michael Clark elevated the costumes – the arse-out look, the big floppy dandy caps, a lot of inventive make-up. Leigh became the masterpiece, the object of art, experimenting with body dysmorphia, shapes and contortions, and foamy mask-like creations.

“MDMA was coming through and there was a guy at Taboo who always dished it out from a big bag of white powder. There was acid, and heroin was on the way, so that was the mood. It was hedonistic but Leigh mainly liked to drink. The door was run by Mark Vaultier and Trojan – Mark liked that old trick of holding a hand mirror in front of the person and saying, ‘Would you let yourself in?’ I had a stint in the cloakroom with Malcolm Duffy but we were tripping on acid and a Katharine Hamnett coat went missing, so we got fired.

“I saw many of his performances – including the enema show at the Fridge in Brixton, about which: there were complaints. If you were in the front row, you got splashed” – Princess Julia

“I think a pivotal moment was Leigh’s installation at Anthony d’Offay gallery. You knew that show was history-making. It was glorious to see Leigh given a new status because what he was doing was art. His looks were statements, personal outpourings and explanations of different moods. Around this time Leigh’s day look was quite astounding – equally as confrontational in its way. He’d wear a clog over the top of a pair of trainers, a double-decker shoe-within-a-shoe, which I believe was an invention of Mae West. He had these mossy-looking wigs he’d cut all the hair off so it was just the netting, quite ratty, and he’d wear a sweat top with the remnants of yesterday’s dinner down the front. There was something really pervy about it and that was absolutely on purpose. He liked to fuck with people’s minds. That was his cruising look as well.

“I saw many of his performances – including the enema show at the Fridge in Brixton, about which: there were complaints. If you were in the front row, you got splashed. And in the early 90s, I went to the play The Homosexual in King’s Cross with Leigh as ‘Madame Garbo’. He could play the piano, he could act, he could be a club clown. He moved through life experimenting with all these different practices and it makes you ask what he would be doing now. This Tate retrospective though, would be the dream. And I wonder if it will uncover anything, because in one sense Leigh was quite private, something of an enigma. Often when you’re flamboyant like that, you use make-up and clothing as a barrier or a mask or a way of reinventing yourself. So I wonder, how much did any of us really know Leigh Bowery?”

This article features in the Winter/Spring 2025 issue of Another Man, which is on sale internationally now. Leigh Bowery! will go on show at Tate Modern in London from 27 February – 31 August 2025.