joseph scissorhands: Leigh Bowery ~ Tell Them I've Gone to Papua New Guinea

Monday 24 January 2022

Leigh Bowery ~ Tell Them I've Gone to Papua New Guinea

Leigh Bowery

"Dress as though your life depends on it or don't bother." - Leigh Bowery

It was a real thrill to visit this small exhibition celebrating the creative looks of Leigh Bowery. The beautifully decorative interior of this tiny jewel of a chapel hidden away in central London, actually threatened to upstage the outrageous designs of Bowery. Leigh Bowery, an interdisciplinary artist, model, muse to Lucian Freud, fashion icon and legendary fixture on the London club scene of the 1980s and 90s was famed for his 'looks' in which he would combine provocative make-up and outlandish outfits to dramatic effect in avante garde performances using his own body as an artistic medium. Seven of Bowery's costumes are featured here, and it was an especial pleasure to see the Dalmation outfit once again. Dalmation was one of the costumes Bowery wore in his one week residency at the Anthony D'Offay Gallery in 1988. Each afternoon he would give a different improvisational performance in full costume and make-up behind a one-way mirror, striking a number of narcissistic poses as a living sculpture. I was studying at St. Martin's College at the time and would drop in every day on my way home just to witness the spectacle, and realise that I was watching something/somebody who was both extraordinary and very unique. The costumes here at the Fitzrovia Chapel are amazing manifestations of Bowery's wonderful imagination, but seem to be a shadow of themselves without the larger than life body and personality of Bowery to fill and animate them. There is a specially produced short film which plays to accompany the display - Leigh Bowery ~ Tell Them I've Gone To Papua New Guinea, (something Leigh Bowery would instruct friends and confidants to tell people, rather than letting them know he was actually terminally ill in hospital). The film features a series of talking head anecdotes from friends and collaborators such as Boy George, and Bowery's wife Nicola Bateman, which are at turns both funny and disgusting. Not everyone will 'get' or appreciate Bowery's aesthetic, but anyone who will have lived through the time will understand how crucial his personal expression displayed through his art, and the part he played in the counter culture was to the period.

The Fitzrovia Chapel

Flower, 1987

Dalmation, 1988

Crewel work, 1988

Ombre, 1988

Ostrich, 1990

The Fitzrovia Chapel is a Grade II* listed Italian Gothic Revival-style building designed by John Loughborough Pearson and his son Frank. Built from 1891-92 the chapel contains a rib vaulted ceiling featuring opulent gold mosaics, and walls of decoratively patterned marble with mosaic inscriptions which were completed in 1929. The mosaics really glisten and shimmer in the chapel's low light. It is such a beautiful venue. The Chapel has a special relationship to and is also a poignant venue for this exhibition, as it is the sole remaining building of the larger of the Middlesex hospital complex which used to surround the chapel, the hospital where Leigh died of AIDS on New Year's Eve 1994.