Leigh Bowery Looks

Description

Leigh Bowery (1961-1994) was a performance artist, fashion designer, nightclub sensation, art object, aspiring pop-star and above all an icon whose influence traversed the music, art, film and fashion world. Perhaps he is best-known for his role as muse and nude model for some of Lucian Freud’s most famous paintings; ironic for the man who was infamous for his costumes. Bowery arrived in London in 1980 from Sunshine, Australia, collaborated notoriously with the dancer Michael Clark, and was proprietor of the infamous 1980s nightclub ‘Taboo’. In the 1990s, Leigh Bowery created performances which both delighted and outraged audiences in New York, London and Tokyo, later incorporating his pop group, Minty.

This book is the definitive guide to the looks designed and, in these photographs, worn by Leigh Bowery. One of Britain’s most heroically ambitious yet underappreciated designers and performance artists, Bowery remains an inspiration to many contemporary fashion designers, though few are willing to admit it. In Leigh Bowery Looks you can easily see why: it contains more than 150 previously unpublished photographs of Bowery, an extraordinary body of work that was the outcome of his collaboration with British photographer Fergus Greer between 1988 and 1994, the year of Bowery’s death.