In this week’s blog, we have a guest blog post by Wayne Fresle, who reflects on his time dressed in trash fashions at club nights such as Asylum/Pyramid at Heaven and Philip Salon's Mud Club, and reviews the new Leigh Bowery exhibition at the Tate Modern.
"What's disturbing about Distortion?
The agenda isn't about beauty or ugliness.
I mean, that's all your ideas".
Leigh Bowery.
The resurgence and feeling of all things Leigh Bowery in late 24/2025 is almost palpable. The buzz that has once again hit London brings renewed interest in one of the most fascinating, thought-provoking Performance Artists of our time. The boy from Sunshine in Melbourne, Australia who made the journey to London on the coat tails of "The Blitz Kids" who he spent hours researching in fashion magazines of the time. The era of ‘gender bending’ was upon us thanks to the likes of Steve Strange and Boy George. Leigh, via the constraints of a religious family and conservative Australia at the time, made the decision he wanted to make his own mark on London, so packed up all his belongings and did it with not so much as aplomb, but more like hurricane force.
It all started in 1982 with a chance encounter with face of the time Scarlett Cannon, who was at the time, running the "Cha Cha" club at the back of "Heaven", the UK’s biggest gay nightclub. Leigh was making his own outfits, but more befitting for the "New Romantics" before him. Advice from Scarlett, and comments on the “naffness” of these from Leigh’s new friends artists Trojan and Space Princess, inspired him to start making clothes that really weren't your average clubwear.
Leigh must have adhered to their advice and ran with it, as before we knew it Bowery, along with Trojan and Space Princess were running around town dressed in designs and looks, using materials and adornments sourced from the mainly Asian Brick Lane area in the East End. Full faces of makeup and hands adorned with rings in reds or greens like Hindu Gods, or more often in homage to Picasso paintings, taking licence with extra noses and lips, which Trojan especially excelled at.
The opening of the Leigh Bowery exhibition at Tate Modern in February 2025 explores not only just Leigh and his fashion creations, but London nightlife in the 1980s and 1990s. The exhibition is organised by Tate Modern in collaboration with Nicola Rainbird, Director and Owner of the Estate of Leigh Bowery and is curated by Fiontán Moran, Curator, International Art; Jessica Baxter, Assistant Curator, International Art, Tate Modern; Nicola Rainbird, Director and Owner of the Estate of Leigh Bowery; and Margery King, Artistic Advisor of the Estate of Leigh Bowery.
Much like the ‘Outlaws’ exhibition at the Fashion and Textile Museum a few months before, you are first faced with a room of ‘Star Trek’ wallpaper (similar to that which adorned the walls of the council flat in the East End of London that Leigh shared with Trojan until Trojan's untimely death by drugs in 1986), and which he continued to live in until his own death from an AIDS-related illness on New Year’s Eve 1994. Against the wallpaper is an array of Trojan's garish and unsettling pictures, mainly painted crudely on things he found in the street such as wooden pallets and headboards. The walls are interspersed with early clubland pictures and artwork featuring and documenting ‘faces’ of the time, club flyers, beer cans and cigarette butts. But most importantly pictures and videos of Leigh's most notorious creation, his club "Taboo". With a giant mirror for the public to look into asking "would you let yourself in?" a quote often uttered by Taboo’s doorman Mark Vaultier.
Installation Photography © Tate Photography (Larina Annora Fernandes)
In the middle of the room and over one wall there are a collection of some of Leigh's early fashion creations including smocktops made of cheap gingham fabric in yellows and reds with frilly edging, and in some cases covered in polka dots and reversed swastikas. A mannequin wearing one of Leigh's most memorable outfits, a lime green low-cut satin top matched perfectly with gloves and a mini tutu made of lime green ostrich feathers. looks out at the observer begging them to imagine Leigh with a massive white cleavage (achieved by wrapping masking tape round and around his middle until he could barely breathe) finished off with the bold clown like drippy-painted head look that most people equate with Leigh.
A large screen shows the film ‘Hail the New Puritan’ by film director Charles Atlas in which we see evidence of original Star Trek-themed room where we see Leigh, Trojan, Rachel Auburn and the ballet dancer Michael Clark getting ready for a night out with hilarious quips, conversation, drinking and several changes of Leigh's creations which were evocative of the time. The next room is a cavernous space with screens showing most of Michael Clark’s ballets such as "No Fire Escape in Hell" and "I am Kurious Orange". By this time Leigh was not only designing outfits for the dancers, which range from polka dots sheer net babydoll nighties edged with down or marabou feathers matched with polka dot Y-fronts, to the wondrous sinister sequin mask and cape creations beautifully adorning crewelwork sequined body stockings.
Leigh was also appearing in these productions alongside non-dancers such as David Holah of ‘Bodymap’ fame, who along with his creative partner Stevie Stewart were also designing costumes for the ballets. With a soundtrack of often punk tracks or later incorporating live performances from the band ‘The Fall’ these, along with the outfits, gave the upper echelon of the ballet World a kick up the rear end it probably needed.
Around this time Leigh was being commissioned to make outfits for many of the more alternative and colourful characters of the time like Boy George, Pete Burns and Holly Johnson which ranged from giant angel wings to customized Levis Jackets covered in gold hair grips; all received with shock and awe.
We also see some of the creations and outfits Leigh used when asked to show his looks behind a two-way mirror as an art installation at the Anthony D'Offay Gallery which led to Leigh's designs being seen not just as his individual clubwear, but in a much more artistic way by the bourgeois of the art world. This was to become more apparent a few years later when Leigh sat for the artist Lucian Freud. Also, here we see more mannequins showing more of the same sequined work (which were painstakingly stitched on by the then Nicola Bateman who later became Leigh's wife), on more stunning crewelwork masks and floor-length capes, with remarkable corsetry designed by Leigh’s friend Mr Pearl all beautifully lined with peach and purple satins and silks. Leigh used the theme of the masks not only to make these stunning creations more sinister and sexualised, but mainly to cut out the expense and time of using make-up all over his face. It worked with vulgar and unsettling precision. Further pictures adorn the walls with Leigh wearing these outfits to events, clubs or on television. There are also many of Leigh's handwritten and drawn blueprints of his burgeoning designs which you can spend time looking at if not distracted by all that is happening around you.
The next room we enter has a giant screen playing the X-rated video of Boy George's "Jesus loves You" song "Generations of Love" for which Leigh was hired by video director Ballie Walsh as creative fashion designer. Here we see Leigh as well as all of his friends including Princess Julia, Sue Tilley, Rachel Auburn, Les Child and David Holah dressed in drag or as prostitutes peddling their wares in Peepshow or Sex Cinemas in early 1990s Soho, before it became the pedestrianised and homogenised place it unfortunately is today. Also in this room are more of the designs Leigh favoured at the time including the "Merkins" that were a crude interpretation of the female vagina which Leigh had a penchant for using at the time along with the first look at Leigh using his body as the "creation" by using straps and belts to over emphasise his pudgy body, usually adorned with a bucket hat that covered half of his face with giant silicone lips safety pinned in place through his cheek piercings making the whole look an unanswerable conundrum to the questionable viewers? Many of these outfits got their debuts at clubs such as "Daisy Chain" and the grand affair which was "Kinky Gerlinky" run by friends Michael and Gerlinde Costiff.
Installation Photography © Tate Photography (Larina Annora Fernandes)
In the next gallery there are huge pictures of Leigh in the "ensembles" he wore for and in Fergus Greer's coffee table book of Leigh, who showed off past outfits from the ‘Drippy Head’ to the safety-pinned lips looks of netting with a skull on his head. Other shots are of Leigh wearing his infamous ‘toilet seat’ look, where he had his head appearing out of a toilet seat with makeup to look like excrement. This toilet seat was held up in an over the shoulder perspex platform, with matching perspex corsetry once again by friend and collaborator Mr Pearl.
Leigh was collaborating a lot at this time with friend Lee Benjamin who was adept at cutting foam and forming it into the triangular platform legs Leigh favoured at the time. Leigh liked the idea of just the one leg looking very much like a ‘Transformers’ toy foot which Leigh had seen in Japan. The other leg was seemingly normal but wearing a giant platform boot or hooker heels, depending on the material used. ‘Mr Peanut Head’ favoured florals with a full-face gimp looking mask, with a jaunty matching floral hat. To the more extreme S&M full black latex suit with long horsehair ponytail making the whole extreme look more sexualised. Another look featured in the Fergus Greer book was of Leigh wearing his old polka dot brown pinstripe material suits, but although brilliant by this time Leigh looked like a different person wearing them. Whether that was from weight gain in his face, or just not feeling comfortable wearing those looks anymore as he had moved on so extremely by then?
The opposite wall is a real juxtaposition which would thrill Leigh, we see Leigh in naked repose in a giant painting by the artist Lucian Freud, there are also several head studies from the same sittings of Leigh asleep. Lucian had met Leigh a few years before hand while Leigh was doing his "one man show" at the Anthony D’Offay Gallery. Freud was fascinated by Leigh and his presence, entranced by his bravery of putting himself out there for the public to gawp at with morbid fascination. These paintings show Leigh at his most vulnerable. There is no make-up or extreme outfits, just Leigh using his body as the material. The paintings are beyond beautiful. ‘Art’ as once used as a lyric by Boy George: ‘Hanging in the Tate with Turner and Van Gogh, tell me pretty fat boy is there something you don't show?’
The next room is a mix of ‘Performance’. There are videos playing of Leigh at ‘Wigstock’ and at some of Michael Alig's (who was himself a parody of some of Leigh’s looks) parties in New York, wearing more of his distorted looks of platform legs and extended giant breasts, with more shocking masks including one that was a closeup of a woman's vagina. Next, we see videos and performances of when Leigh wanted to become a ‘Popstar’ and formed the bands ‘Raw Sewage’ with Sheila Tequila and Stella Stein. A video of them filmed in Piccadilly's Trocadero Centre shows them all in ‘black face’ naked, apart from belts wrapped around them and the infamous ‘Merkins’, tottering around perilously in towering platforms made by Leigh. Leigh famously fell out with both fellow band mates when he didn't think they were taking their roles seriously. This spurred him on to form the band ‘Minty’ with friend and collaborator Richard Torry’ and face-about-town Matthew Glamorre. Minty went on to play live at a few infamous gigs, which entailed gruesome stage theatrics including using his wife Nicola Bowery Rainbird from looking like she was drinking vomit or standing naked in a see-through shower curtain ensemble to the most shocking and infamous the ‘live birth’.
Leigh was obsessed with the film maker "John Waters" who used the drag queen ‘Divine’ in most of his films during the 70s and 80s. One such film ‘Female Trouble’ shows Divine apparently giving birth to her daughter ‘Taffy’ using her teeth to cut the umbilical cord then spitting it out. Leigh decided to bastardise this act in the most dramatic way making a sling for poor Nicola to hang upside down with her face in his crotch while Leigh fashioned a plastic body undercarriage which unbeknownst to the wide eye public had an opening made of Velcro. Once Leigh was on his back with legs wide apart pretending to be in labour while still singing, Nicola would burst out in dramatic fashion covered in slime with a string of sausages as an umbilical cord. This outfit is on show but seemingly makes no sense off the body and without him jumping around in gay abandon as so many of Leigh's creations don’t.
There is also video evidence and pictures of Leigh's famous ‘Enema’ performances, in which the unsuspected front row would be covered in the contents of Leigh's bowels much to their horror. Leigh seemingly just wanted to shock and be infamous and really wasn't too fussed as to how. But without doubt, each attempt was holding a mirror up to the public to ask why they were often so conservative in thoughts and ideas? Leigh by this point knew he was HIV Positive and didn't have long to live and wanted the end of his life to be seemingly as shocking as possible. His ‘secret’ was only known by best friend Sue Tilley who went on herself to be painted by Lucian Freud and become the subject of one of the most expensive paintings ever sold in the art world. She also wrote a book about Leigh which was reprinted in conjunction with the exhibition. Sue was dared to share his status with anyone as Leigh said he wanted to be remembered as somebody with "idea's and not Aids"
Installation Photography © Tate Photography (Larina Annora Fernandes)
There are more home videos of Leigh in some of his oddly enough more disturbing ‘daytime’ looks which he wore which made him look like a sex pest/come trainspotter, favouring shop dummy wigs which he took great delight in wearing skewwhiff, so the public were made very aware of what they were. Other home videos by friend and Taboo DJ Jeffrey Hinton show Leigh and several ‘faces’ of the time either putting on shows or getting ready to go out. Young faces without a care in the world, who had no idea about what was around the corner. An epidemic which saw talented friends one by one succumb to the disease, which up until that point hadn't been at the forefront of anyone's minds. The ‘butterflies’, lovers and friends who barely get a mention these days.
Whilst this exhibition is about Leigh and his legacy and influence on major designers since his death including Galliano, Westwood, McQueen, Jacobs, Owens and a whole new school of thought from up-and-coming designers it is also in no small way a nod and a wink to the ‘butterflies’ Leigh surrounded himself with, collaborated with, loved or often rugby tackled to the ground. The whole exhibition was beautiful, informative, challenging, comical and extreme, for anyone interested in the underground of London Clubland in the 1980s it's a must see.
"London hadn't seen a performance like it Since Sybil Thorndike appeared as St Joan"
Quentin Crisp – The Naked Civil Servant
Leigh Bowery at Tate Modern runs until 31 August 2025.
In mid-85 Wayne Fresle ran/chased away to London to find his "People". The people who through magazines such as The Face and ID were ripping up the rule book on the "Hard Times look" of the time.
The dying embers of Leigh Bowery's Taboo Club were barely extinguished before Wayne who now went by the moniker "Flo" threw himself into the nightlife of trash fashions favoured at the time at club nights such as Asylum/Pyramid at Heaven, Philip Salon's Mud Club. To the newly opened Limelight. Fashion freaks by night, squatters by day. Kids with big dreams and even bigger personalities.
The stage had been set by Bowery and The Blitz Kids before. Kinky Gerlinky was just around the corner. London was primed and ready for dressing to distress.
