1. Leigh Bowery was an Australian performance artist, club promoter, and fashion designer.
28 Facts About Leigh Bowery
1. 2.
Leigh Bowery was born and raised in Sunshine, a suburb of Melbourne, Australia.
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Leigh Bowery became an influential and lively figure in the underground clubs of London and New York, as well as in art and fashion circles.
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Leigh Bowery attracted attention by wearing outlandish and creative outfits, which he made himself.
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Leigh Bowery became friends and flatmates with artist Gary Barnes and David Walls.
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Leigh Bowery created costumes for them to wear, and the trio became known in the clubs as the "Three Kings".
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Leigh Bowery appeared in magazines and on television, including commercials for Pepe Jeans and Rifat Ozbek.
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Leigh Bowery was known as a club promoter, and created the club Taboo at Maximus in Leicester Square with promoter Tony Gordon in 1985.
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Leigh Bowery influenced several designers and artists, and was known for wildly creative costumes, makeup, wigs and headgear, all of which combined to be striking and often kitschy.
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Leigh Bowery designed costumes for the Michael Clark Dance Company.
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When that company performed at the Brooklyn Academy of Music in 1987, Leigh Bowery won a Bessie Award for his work on No Fire Escape in Hell.
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Leigh Bowery had been hidden for the first part of the performance by being strapped to Leigh's belly with her face in his crotch.
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In London in 1988, Leigh Bowery met the noted painter Lucian Freud in his club Taboo.
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Freud had seen Leigh Bowery perform at Anthony d'Offay Gallery, in London.
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Leigh Bowery used his body and manipulation of his flesh to create personas.
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Leigh Bowery posed for a number of large full-length paintings that are considered among Freud's best work.
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Freud noted that Leigh Bowery by nature was a shy and gentle man, and his flamboyant persona was in part a form of self-defence.
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Leigh Bowery's flesh is a magnificent ruin, at once damaged and riotously alive.
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Leigh Bowery's violet-domed, wrinkly tube hangs between thighs marked with sinister spots or cuts his knees are massive.
20.
Leigh Bowery is a painted monument who quietly contemplates his existence inside this flesh.
21.
Leigh Bowery's wife did not know that Bowery had HIV until he was admitted to hospital in late November 1994.
22.
Leigh Bowery died seven months after their marriage, on New Year's Eve 1994, from an AIDS-related illness at the Middlesex Hospital, Westminster, London, five weeks after his admission.
23.
Leigh Bowery decorated his flat in a style that was similar to the way he dressed, with Star Trek-themed wallpaper, mirrors and a large piano.
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Leigh Bowery was a ringleader of misbehaviour, and with his club, he created a place where there were no rules.
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Leigh Bowery influenced other artists and designers including Meadham Kirchhoff, Alexander McQueen, Lucian Freud, Vivienne Westwood, Boy George, Antony and the Johnsons, Lady Gaga, John Galliano, Scissor Sisters, David LaChapelle, Lady Bunny, Acid Betty, Shea Coulee, and Charles Jeffrey plus numerous Nu-Rave bands and nightclubs in London and New York City.
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Leigh Bowery was the main inspiration for the Tranimal drag movement, which emphasised an animalistic and post-modern take on drag.
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Leigh Bowery was the subject of a small retrospective Art exhibition 'Look At Me' at the RMIT Gallery at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia in February-March 1999, curated by Robert Buckingham and Rachel Young.
28.
Leigh Bowery was the subject of a contemporary dance, physical theatre and circus show in August 2018 at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, put on by Australian choreographer Andy Howitt.