Leigh Bowery’s Tate Survey Exudes Grimy, Glamorous Hedonism

“I never want to look ordinary,” Leigh Bowery told i-D magazine in 1985. Tate Modern’s new exhibition on his life and work proves that he succeeded—and then some. A gay icon in 1980s and ’90s London club culture, Bowery was a fashion designer, performance artist, and total original from the start. The show follows him from his arrival in London from Australia at the age of 19 through the inception of his infamous club Taboo, his establishment as an avant-garde fashi