#Leigh Bowery Fergus Greer

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FERGUS GREER x LEIGH BOWERY [SESSION VII: LOOK 37, 1994]

[milksockets]

'session vi, look 31, shot by fergus greer, 1992' in take a bowery: the art and (larger than) life of leigh bowery - australian museum of contemporary art (2004)

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Leigh Bowery by Fergus Greer 1994

[mn3m0s1n3s]

Manipulation of Leigh Bowery "Session VII, Look 38" by Fergus Greer. 1994.

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Leigh Bowery, Session IV, Look 21, 1991, photograph. Courtesy: Michael Hoppen Gallery; photograph: © Fergus Greer

Leigh Bowery (Melbourne, 26 marzo 1961 – Londra, 1º gennaio 1995) è stato un artista, drag queen e designer di moda australiano.

[iamelli]

Leigh Bowery

It's strange for me to write about Leigh Bowery. I have resisted researching him for a while, but people keep telling me my practice has hints of his influence and that I should know about him. So here I am, fresh after watching The Legend of Leigh Bowery on YouTube. If I'm being perfectly honest, I'm still a little resistant, but I can see what people are talking about.

Bowery almost defies description. It's as if costume, performance, dance, fashion and art got together and made a human. There are no barriers between his art forms, he is utterly free from constraint and outrageously himself. As one of his friends said, 'he lived his life as a work of art.'

Fashion and costume were the heart of his creativity. Born in Melbourne, Australia, he moved to London in the early '80s to pursue his love for fashion. It was the height of New Romanticism, where dressing up was an essential part of club life, and Bowery quickly became the king of the scene. He would push the edges of the creative process and burst right out the side well past fashion and costuming into a dimension all of his own making.

Bowery's costumes were so over the top and confusing they were uncategorisable. For him, it wasn't just dressing up and showing off and shocking people; there needed to be some kind of radical element of change within it, something contra. He would admire people's creative fashion but often asked, 'Where's the poison?' Bowery was very clear about not being a drag queen. He was interested in the human body and disappearance and how it can be changed. He loved playing with the tension between pain and pleasure, light heartedness and darkness, the glamorous and the horrifying.

I imagine he was not only pushing against suffocating social norms of how people are expected to dress and behave, but he was also acting in extreme opposition to England's conservative, right-wing politics at the time. His love of getting up people's noses and love of the outrageous help carved out space for queer people living under Section 28, which prohibited homosexuality in the UK up until the early 2000s.

I am deeply inspired and motivated by Bowery's outrageous costuming and phenomenal ability to push so hard that he created his own realm. I hope one day I can push that far. I can see how the costuming I use can hint at Bowery’s outrageousness.  The difference between us is that while I'm interested in pushing against conformity and systems of oppression, I hope to find a sense of empowerment, inclusion and joy in my practice. In contrast, there is a large strain of aggression in his work, a (justifiably) angry fuck you to the world around him that is just not present in mine. 

All images by Fergus Greer.

[killyridols]

leigh bowery by fergus greer

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Fergus Greer

Leigh Bowery, Session II, Look 10, 1989

[opticandmasturbation]

Fergus Greer, Leigh Bowery, Session VII, Look 37, 1994

[milksockets]

'session iv, look 17, shot by fergus greer, 1991' in take a bowery: the art and (larger than) life of leigh bowery - australian museum of contemporary art (2004)

[robertocustodioart]

Leigh Bowery by Fergus Greer 1988

[mn3m0s1n3s]

Leigh Bowery “Session II, Look 7” shot by Fergus Greer. 1989.

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Leigh Bowery

Foto: Fergus Greer

[fuskida]

Leigh Bowery Session III, Look 15 (1990) photography by Fergus Greer

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Fergus Greer Leigh Bowery, Session VII, Look 37, June 1994 c-print