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A blast: Leigh Bowery!, at Tate Modern, reviewed

Entertainingly unhinged portrait of the eighties drag provocateur

Digby Warde-Aldam
‘Limelight: Leigh Bowery’, 1987, by Dave Swindells © DAVE SWINDELLS
EXPLORE THE ISSUE 08 March 2025
issue 08 March 2025

Tate Modern’s latest exhibition is a bizarre proposition on so many levels. Its subject, the Australian designer, performer, provocateur and club scenester Leigh Bowery, was by all accounts inescapable in London for much of the 1980s and early 1990s. Standing at well over 6ft and weighing 17st, he would have been a conspicuous presence on the capital’s streets even had he not adopted the berserk sci-fi drag attire that became his signature aesthetic.

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