What a strange show this is. It’s a throwback to post-punk, post-New Romantic London; the Tory years of boom and bust; the era of Aids crisis, the years of “yoof” culture on TV and of the underground coming up for air; years of art going hip and mainstream; of innocence and rage and provocation.
Leigh Bowery may seem to have emerged from some hidden reach of London’s subculture, but he was twice interviewed for the BBC’s Clothes Show, and sped around his environs, and club Taboo, for London Weekend Television, in the company of Hugh Laurie. It is a pity this last hilarious and at times revealing film is not in Tate Modern’s Leigh Bowery retrospective. Just about everything else Bowery did, as well as everyone he met, danced and drank with, everyone he hung out with, insulted and argued with, is.
