The King of Clubs: New exhibitions delve into life of Leigh Bowery

Forty years ago in London, the flamboyant New Romantics subculture was coming to an end and the rave scene had yet to begin, but one underground club was about to become bolder and louder. At Leigh Bowery’s club, Taboo, Hi-NRG dance music throbbed from the speakers, polysexual identities were celebrated, and outrageous, colourful, sculptural fashion was on display in every direction.  

Bowery’s work as a performance artist, fashion designer and nightclub promoter is back in the spotlight thanks to two exhibitions in the city he came to call home.

‘Leigh Bowery!’ opens at the Tate Modern on 27 February, celebrating a “dynamic creative world that blurred the lines between art and life”, while the Fashion & Textile Museum is hosting ‘Outlaws: Fashion Renegades of 80s London’ until 9 March, which examines the world around Taboo.

Bowery grew up in a quiet suburb near Melbourne, Australia and moved to London aged 19 desperate to be a part of the New Romantic movement where people like Boy George, Princess Julia and Steve Strange fused glam rock with 18th and 19th century romantic fashion. He quickly immersed himself in the nightlife scene frequented by Central Saint Martins art school students and emerging musicians, artists and designers.

Many of these infamous club nights didn’t last very long. Their makeshift energy was as easily disassembled as it was haphazardly thrown together and the New Romantic wave had reached its peak. Bowery saw a gap for a new nightclub, one that would push the Club Scene to new extremes and opened Taboo in Covent Garden in 1985. It arguably became the most influential nightclub in British culture.

NJ Stevenson, co-curator of ‘Outlaws: Fashion Renegades of 80s London’, explains why Bowery has such a notable legacy among the many names that emerged at this time: “He was the biggest. He was not just the biggest in stature. He was the biggest in energy, the biggest in character, the biggest in ideas. He was the person who drove everything for a moment. And it was just a moment, but it was a really important moment in club history, and that’s why he’s remembered.”

Martin Green, who co-curated the exhibition with Stevenson, agrees: “He became the king of the scene, but he set out to do it.”

This boom in the UK creative scene was made possible by squatting culture, so artists could live cheaply, and government grants that supported more people into college, including on art courses, and with entrepreneurship funds.

However, it was also in response to an era of hardship for many young people, explains Jess Baxter, assistant curator of ‘Leigh Bowery!’ at the Tate Modern: “The 1980s in Britain was a time of mass unemployment, increasingly conservative values, and rising homophobia further incited by the AIDS epidemic. Consequently, people were looking for more and more creative ways to express themselves, escape from everyday life, have sex and be queer with whoever they wanted to be with – more often than not, on the dancefloor, in pubs, clubs and gay bars.”

Bowery turned himself into a walking piece of art: painting his face, exposing and covering his skin in unusual ways and draping himself in outlandish garbs. To be on the guestlist for Taboo, you had to show your devotion to experimenting wildly with identity and expression. “The way he used his body, skin, gestures, his very personality was a kind of living painting and sculpture that pushed costume beyond ‘fashion’ to something truly experimental and outrageous,” says Baxter.

Bowery’s body of work often engaged in shock factors from the amount of sex and drugs freely available at his nightclubs, to bodily fluids used in his art. Ironically, nothing was taboo.

Though Taboo closed only a year later, Bowery had made a name for himself. He went on to design costumes for dancer and choreographer Michael Clark, put on performance art exhibitions (most notoriously his show in which he ‘birthed’ his creative collaborator Nicola Bateman), posed for artist Lucian Freud and formed the band Minty.

In 1994, at the age of just 33, Bowery died of an AIDS-related illness. 

A young Lee McQueen was present at Bowery’s final performance before his death, just one of the famous names his work inspired. “Bowery’s work provides a form of inspiration for many artists to create art on their own terms, such as Sin Wai Kin, Jeffrey Gibson, Prem Sahib to name just a few. Outside of the global art scene, his influence is particularly alive in the work of Alexander McQueen,” says Baxter.

Lady Gaga, John Galliano and the Scissor Sisters have all cited Bowery as a source of inspiration. More than 30 years since his death, Baxter believes his legacy is as prevalent amongst the creative sphere today: “Now more than ever are we seeing Leigh Bowery’s influence – from major fashion houses like Rick Owens and Charles Jeffrey LOVERBOY, to body-distorting alternative drag, to queer nightlife around the globe,” she says.

Green and Stevenson say that the exhibition at the Fashion & Textile Museum has been hugely popular with students and young people who feel an affinity with this period in London’s history.

“When lockdown eased up, I saw a lot of young people really dressing up, because they’d been indoors for quite a long time, maybe finding things on eBay or whatever, and really dressing up again. A lot of people really dress up to come to the exhibition,” says Green.

It also comes at a time when the nightlife industry in the UK is facing a steep decline, with the number of nightclubs plummeting to 787 in 2024, compared with 1,700 in 2013. LGBTQ+ venues are particularly at risk of closure and these exhibitions are inspiring young people to take things into their own hands.

Stevenson says: “There has been lots of conversations about venues having to close and struggling post-COVID because areas are being developed and people can’t afford the rents anymore. But having said that, there is still that kind of way of [young people] wanting to do things for themselves and setting up in really inexpensive spaces under railway arches, or slightly derelict spaces, which is exactly the same way that it used to happen. So, I think that story is really quite prevalent. This exhibition has really been picked up by young people. They’re completely fascinated with this story.”

Bowery’s legacy serves as a reminder that nightlife is worth protecting. It can be more than just a way to pass the weekend, but the places where we’re most free to be our true selves, to rebel against societal confines and nurture the communities that shape our culture.