DOCSLIB.ORG

Celebrating Bowery: Radical Costume Parties As Queer Heterotopia in Brisbane

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
Celebrating Bowery: Radical Costume Parties As Queer Heterotopia in Brisbane This may be the author’s version of a work that was submitted/accepted for publication in the following source: Taylor, Madeline, Hickey, Anna, & Rohers, Remi (2020) Celebrating Bowery:Radical costume parties as queer heterotopia in Bris- bane. Studies in Costume and Performance, 5(1), pp. 85-100. This file was downloaded from: https://eprints.qut.edu.au/203814/ c 2020 Intellect Ltd Visual Essay This work is covered by copyright. Unless the document is being made available under a Creative Commons Licence, you must assume that re-use is limited to personal use and that permission from the copyright owner must be obtained for all other uses. If the docu- ment is available under a Creative Commons License (or other specified license) then refer to the Licence for details of permitted re-use. It is a condition of access that users recog- nise and abide by the legal requirements associated with these rights. If you believe that this work infringes copyright please provide details by email to [email protected] License: Creative Commons: Attribution-Noncommercial 4.0 Notice: Please note that this document may not be the Version of Record (i.e. published version) of the work. Author manuscript versions (as Sub- mitted for peer review or as Accepted for publication after peer review) can be identified by an absence of publisher branding and/or typeset appear- ance. If there is any doubt, please refer to the published source. https://doi.org/10.1386/scp_00015_1 Celebrating Bowery: radical costume parties as queer heterotopia in Brisbane Authors: Madeline Taylor - Queensland University of Technology / University of Melbourne Anna Hickey – The Australian College of the Remi Roehrs – Queensland University of Abstract This visual essay explores the creative practice of The Stitchery Collective, which uses costume as a strategy in their participatory works. Inspired by performance artist, queer icon and costume lover Leigh Bowery, The Stitchery Collective has created a The Bowery Party, a series of events encouraging radical dress up. These immersive occasions emphasise the significance of costume as enabling joy, community, and extravagant social performance. The essay discusses the importance of Bowery as a figure in designing the party in terms of the nature of participant responses, as his legacy provides a subversive approach to costuming the self. The analysis focuses on strategies for and the importance of making and holding space, both physical and virtual, for alternate visions of the body - an empowering ethic that celebrates diversity and inclusivity. The costumes created by the attending public are challenging, often both to wear and to social, gender and body norms. This essay offers a brief example of the costumes created by participants in direct response to Bowery as a radical, slippery and chaotic aesthetic target. Keywords: Leigh Bowery; queer heterotopia; party; participatory; costume; Figure 1: Bowery Haus 2018: Costume parade crowning. Photograph by Savannah Van Der Niet. Background to project and practitioners Since 2016 The Stitchery Collective, a Brisbane based design collective, has been creating a series of events inspired by Leigh Bowery. Bowery was an Australian performance artist whose international career (1982 – 1994) has continued to influence fashion, art, and culture. The three events held so far encourage radical dress up, inspired by Bowery’s creative practice and legacy. The events incorporate dancing, performances, posing, a costume parade and crownings for the best costumes [Figure 1]. The last two events were held as the flagship closing-night party for Melt: Festival of Queer Arts and Culture, Brisbane’s annual queer arts festival produced by the Brisbane Powerhouse. This programming further honours Bowery’s legacy in the queer community and forefronts the creativity and social importance of queer cultures of costume. To contextualise this essay and our creative practice, it is essential to introduce Leigh Bowery, who has been the subject of significant scholarship in this issue and elsewhere (Tilley 1997; Greer 2005; Karantonis 2015). Bowery was born in a conservative suburb of Sunshine in Melbourne in 1961. After permanently relocating to London aged 19 in 1980, he began selling his clothing designs at Kensington Markets and fashion boutiques, and designing costumes for others to wear both at club nights and for the Michael Clark dance company. As the decade progressed Bowery quickly became an influential figure in the New Romantic club subculture, with Elizabeth Wilson terming him the era’s “high priest” (2007: 103), hosting the nightclub Taboo, performing at clubs and festivals in London as well as touring Europe, New York, and Japan. He became “the primary wearer and performer of his designs” (Granata 2017: 55), and his work increasingly entered the art scene, performed in galleries and captured through studio portraiture, like that of Greer’s (2005). Photographs by Greer, shot across the 1980s and 1990s, provide valuable documentation of Bowery’s costumes1. Bowery’s costume-making, performance, and image-making practice that emerged over this period was to become a significant body of work that challenged and subverted both mainstream and avant-garde practices of fashion and clothing. Sadly Bowery passed away in 1994 at just 33 years of age due to AIDS-related illness, leaving behind a significant visual legacy that has been described as ‘brutal, visceral, gruesome, at best tasteless, at worst horrific’ (Bancroft 2012: 74). Healy reflects on Bowery’s practice, stating that: Bowery was not simply dressing up; it was his lifestyle and commentary on the mundane, a joke about appearance. His collections or ‘looks’ were based on himself manipulating his body with clothing and make-up. Working outside the comfort zone, he developed a clothing aesthetic that few would dare follow. Original, provocative, evolutionary; Bowery manipulated clothing to totally change one’s appearance, like a form of cosmetic surgery (2014). With the distance of several decades, critical conclusions can be drawn about Bowery’s body of work and its influence. For Bancroft (2012), Bowery’s work challenged and revealed the relationship between signifiers of dress and the construction of gender, further arguing that his creative practice was one of the first to reveal gender using the body. For Granata, the use of ‘taboo’ performance practices such as on-stage enemas and birth scenes evidences Bowery’s “interest in exploring the boundaries and limits of the body” to further unsettle audiences using strategies of inversion, debasement and degradation (2017: 61; 2016: 110). 1 A useful selection of Greer’s portraits of Bowery from 1988 to 1994, published by The Guardian in March 2019, can be found online here: https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/gallery/2019/mar/06/leigh- bowery-most-outrageous-looks-in-pictures She goes on to argue that his experimentation with, and transformation of, his body, both during his more theatrical performances and with his highly artificial ‘daywear self’, emphasises the fluidity and performativity of gender constructions (2017: 70). This recalls Butler’s notion of ‘gender trouble’, whereby acts of ‘subversive confusion’ ([1990] 1999, 46) through dress and performance of identities work to socially undermine rigid understanding of identity as fixed, stable and categorical. Bowery’s prolific body of work presented many alternate visions of the body, which work to first, individually challenge specific aesthetic codes informed by notions of heternormative gender, good taste and the normative body, and second, en masse by destabilising the notion of singular, fixed identity. Looking specifically at his aesthetic strategies, several defining characteristics are common across Bowery’s work. These include masks or elements covering the face, distortion and manipulation of the body, incorporating every day and non-traditional objects, costumes that fully engulf and obscure the person, repetition of print from head to toe, playing with scale and an exaggeration of features (including clown-like makeup), all visible in Figure 1. More broadly his work engaged deeply with aspects of embodiment, using his costumes to incite discomfort for the wearer and viewer, embracing the terrifying, and repositioning the ugly as beautiful. These distinctive elements position Bowery’s aesthetic as one that can be reinterpreted and reimagined by audiences as they offer clear guidelines, but also endless possibilities. In high fashion, Bowery’s aesthetic influenced Vivienne Westwood and Jean-Paul Gaultier and was documented in influential magazines like i-D, The Face and Blitz during his lifetime (Granata 2017: 166; Healy 2014), and posthumously has been reinterpreted by designers including Alexander McQueen, Hussein Chalayan, and Rick Owens. In performance art practice, Bowery’s aesthetic can be seen in contemporary work such as that by Sydney performance duo The Huxleys. On a vernacular level, Bowery’s recognisable aesthetic offers distinct elements for dress-uppers to incorporate into their outfits, such as simple restagings of his iconic looks such as the stacked reading glasses, the melting candle on a bald head [Figure 13], or the exaggerated lips [Figures 1, 2, 5, 10, 12, 15 and 16]. The Stitchery Collective, founded in 2010, is a group of fashion, art and performance practitioners based in Brisbane, Australia. Our work draws on our diverse individual interests including installation, costume design and
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Michael Clark: Cosmic Dancer
    Michael Clark: Cosmic Dancer Barbican Art Gallery, London, UK 7 October 2020 – 3 January 2021 Media View: 6 October 2020 #MichaelClark @barbicancentre The exhibition has been recognised with a commendation from the Sotheby’s Prize 2019. Michael Clark, Because We Must, 1987 © Photography by Richard Haughton This Autumn, Barbican Art Gallery stages the first ever major exhibition on the groundbreaking dancer and choreographer Michael Clark. Exploring his unique combination of classical and contemporary culture, Michael Clark: Cosmic Dancer unfolds as a constellation of striking portraits of Clark through the eyes of legendary collaborators and world-renowned artists including Charles Atlas, BodyMap, Leigh Bowery, Duncan Campbell, Peter Doig, Cerith Wyn Evans, Sarah Lucas, Silke Otto-Knapp, Elizabeth Peyton, The Fall and Wolfgang Tillmans. 2020 marks the 15th year of Michael Clark Company’s collaboration with the Barbican as an Artistic Associate. This exhibition, one of the largest surveys ever dedicated to a living choreographer, presents a comprehensive story of Clark’s career to date and development as a pioneer of contemporary dance who challenged the furthest intersections of dance, life and art through a union of ballet technique and punk culture. Films, sculptures, paintings and photographs by his collaborators across visual art, music and fashion are exhibited alongside rare archival material, placing Clark within the wider cultural context of his time. Contributions by cult icons of London’s art scene establish his radical presence in Britain’s cultural history. Jane Alison, Head of Visual Arts, Barbican said: “We’re thrilled to be sharing this rare opportunity for audiences to get to know the inspirational work of one of the UK’s most influential choreographers and performers, Michael Clark.
    [Show full text]
  • Charles Atlas
    The term renaissance man is used rather too short film Ms. Peanut Visits New Atlas also created the 90-minute documentary freely these days, but it certainly applies to York (1999), before directing the Merce Cunningham: a Lifetime of Dance. And Charles Atlas, whose output includes film documentary feature The Legend in 2008, a year before Cunningham died, Atlas directing, lighting design, video art, set design, of Leigh Bowery (2002). The two filmed a production of the choreographer’s ballet live video improvisation, costume design and have remained close collaborators Ocean (inspired by Cunningham’s partner and documentary directing. – Atlas designed the lighting for collaborator John Cage) at the base of the For the past 30 years, Atlas has been best Clark’s production at the Barbican Rainbow Granite Quarry in Minnesota, the known for his collaborations with dancer and – but it was with another legendary performance unfurling against 160ft walls of rock. choreographer Michael Clark, who he began choreographer, who was himself Alongside his better-known works, Atlas has working with as a lighting designer in 1984. His a great influence on Clark, that directed more than 70 other films, fromAs Seen first film with Clark, Hail the New Puritan, was a Atlas came to prominence when on TV, a profile of performance artist Bill Irwin, mock documentary that followed dance’s punk he first mixed video and dance in to Put Blood in the Music, his homage to the renegade as his company, aided by performance the mid-1970s. diversity of New York’s downtown music scene artist Leigh Bowery and friends, prepared for Merce Cunningham was already of the late 1980s.
    [Show full text]
  • Queer Icon Penny Arcade NYC USA
    Queer icON Penny ARCADE NYC USA WE PAY TRIBUTE TO THE LEGENDARY WISDOM AND LIGHTNING WIT OF THE SElf-PROCLAIMED ‘OLD QUEEn’ oF THE UNDERGROUND Words BEN WALTERS | Photographs DAVID EdwARDS | Art Direction MARTIN PERRY Styling DAVID HAWKINS & POP KAMPOL | Hair CHRISTIAN LANDON | Make-up JOEY CHOY USING M.A.C IT’S A HOT JULY AFTERNOON IN 2009 AND I’M IN PENNy ARCADE’S FOURTH-FLOOR APARTMENT ON THE LOWER EASt SIde of MANHATTan. The pink and blue walls are covered in portraits, from Raeburn’s ‘Skating Minister’ to Martin Luther King to a STOP sign over which Penny’s own image is painted (good luck stopping this one). A framed heart sits over the fridge, Day of the Dead skulls spill along a sideboard. Arcade sits at a wrought-iron table, before her a pile of fabric, a bowl of fruit, two laptops, a red purse, and a pack of American Spirits. She wears a striped top, cargo pants, and scuffed pink Crocs, hair pulled back from her face, no make-up. ‘I had asked if I could audition to play myself,’ she says, ‘And the word came back that only a movie star or a television star could play Penny Arcade!’ She’s talking about the television film, An Englishman in New York, the follow-up to The Naked Civil Servant, in which John Hurt reprises his role as Quentin Crisp. Arcade, a regular collaborator and close friend of Crisp’s throughout his last decade, is played by Cynthia Nixon, star of Sex PENNY ARCADE and the City – one of the shows Arcade has blamed for the suburbanisation of her beloved New York City.
    [Show full text]
  • Lucian Freud Pdf, Epub, Ebook
    LUCIAN FREUD PDF, EPUB, EBOOK William Feaver | 488 pages | 06 Nov 2007 | Rizzoli International Publications | 9780847829521 | English | New York, United States Lucian Freud PDF Book Amsterdam and New York: Rodopi, pp. They are generally sombre and thickly impastoed, often set in unsettling interiors and urban landscapes. Hotel Bedroom Settling in Paris in , Freud painted many portraits, including Hotel Bedroom , which features a woman lying in a bed with white sheets pulled up to her shoulders. Freud moved to Britain in with his parents after Hitler came to power in Germany. Lucian Freud, renowned for his unflinching observations of anatomy and psychology, made even the beautiful people including Kate Moss look ugly. Michael Andrews — Freud belonged to the School of London , a group of artists dedicated to figurative painting. Retrieved 9 February The Daily Telegraph. Retrieved 29 January Freud was one of a number of figurative artists who were later characterised by artist R. The works are noted for their psychological penetration and often discomforting examination of the relationship between artist and model. Wikipedia article. His series of paintings and drawings of his mother, begun in and continuing until the day after her death in , are particularly frank and dramatic studies of intimate life passages. Freud worked from life studies, and was known for asking for extended and punishing sittings from his models. The work's generic title, giving no hint of the specifics of the sitter or the setting, reflects the consistent, clinical detachment with which Freud approached all subjects, no matter what their relationship to him. Ria, Naked Portrait , a nude completed in , required sixteen months of work, with the model, Ria Kirby, posing all but four evenings during that time.
    [Show full text]
  • ALGA Newsletter Dec 2018/Jan2019
    ALGA Newsletter December 2018/Jan 2019 WHAT A YEAR! What a fantastic and busy year we’ve had here at ALGA as we celebrated our 40th Anniversary - as we take a few weeks off we just wanted to share with you a few bits of news and our plans and suggestions for Midsumma 2019. What a fine looking bunch - at the closing drinks of the Queer Legacies, New Solidarities conference in November, delegates and ALGA members lit up the candles and toasted the 40th Anniversary of ALGA. ALGA AGM At our special 40th Anniversary AGM we gathered at Hares and Hyenas to celebrate and do business. Hosted by Mama Alto, we also announced our plan in 2019 to enter into a period of consulation regarding a potential new name for the organisation. This process will consider input from our members, supporters and wider community and has been informed by discussions about the broad diversity of all our LGBTIQ+ communities. Come along to the our stall at Midsumma Carnival to learn more about how you can have your say. You can find the Annual Report on our 1. website. www.alga.org.au ALGA stall at Midsumma Carnival 2019 Drop in to see us at Carnival on Sunday 20th January any time from 11am-5pm. New copies of Secret Histories of Queer Melbourne publication available for sale on the day! Find out more: https://midsumma.org. au/what-s-on/carnival If you are interested in volunteering on our stall, please let us know. [email protected] Here’s our recommendations for events and exhibitions and other activities celebrating queer histories at Midsumma 2019 GLAM pride Victoria at Midsumma Pride March - Sunday February 3, 11am Join fellow GLAMorous LGBTIQ+ folks and allies in queerying the catalogue and curating the revolution at Pride March in Melbourne.
    [Show full text]
  • CHARLES ATLAS Born 1949, St. Louis, MO Lives and Works in New York, NY 2018 Cage Cunningham Fellow, Baryshnikov Arts Center
    CHARLES ATLAS Born 1949, St. Louis, MO Lives and works in New York, NY SELECTED AWARDS AND HONORS 2018 Cage Cunningham Fellow, Baryshnikov Arts Center, New York, NY 2017 Special Mention Award, Viva Arte Viva, 57th Venice Biennale, Venice, Italy 2016 United States Artists Fellowship, Chicago, IL 2014 Curtis R. Priem Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center (EMPAC), Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, residency, Troy, NY Robert Rauschenberg Foundation, residency, Captiva Island, FL 2010 Peabody Award for Art: 21 (“William Kentridge: Anything Is Possible”), PBS TV documentary, Co-Director 2008 Peabody Award for Art:21 (“Power”), PBS TV documentary, Director (Consulting) 2006 Foundation for Contemporary Art, Biennial John Cage Award 2003 Melbourne Queer Film Festival, Best Documentary for The Legend of Leigh Bowery 2000 Dance Screen 2000, Best Documentary for Merce Cunningham: A Lifetime of Dance 1998 New York Dance and Performance Award [“Bessie”], for The “Martha” Tapes John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship 1987 New York Dance and Performance Award [“Bessie”], for sustained achievement in video New York Dance and Performance Award [“Bessie”], for costume design 1985 France, Ministry of Culture, 1st prize for VideoDance * a catalogue was published for the exhibition SELECTED SOLO EXHIBITIONS 2020 Charles Atlas: Here she is ... v1, University Art Museum, University at Albany, State University of New York, Albany, NY Charles Atlas: Ominous, Glamorous, Momentous, Ridiculous, Fondazione ICA Milano, Milan, Italy Charles Atlas:
    [Show full text]
  • Andrew Howitt
    LEIGH BOWERY – Sunshine Boy Dance/Theatre/Fashion/Performance Art This Production will be a multi-layered Club Night event, celebrating the life of Leigh Bowery. He was very provocative and inspirational Major Artist. it will start in Sunshine and follow the him to London: Fashion – Art- Sex- Music inspired by Leigh Bowery: Life and Times of an ICON by Sue Tiley Leigh Bowery (26 March 1961 – 31 December 1994) was a London based performance artist, club promoter, and designer. He was also a significant model for the English painter,Lucien Freud. Bowery was born 26 March 1961 in Sunshine, Australia . He studied music, played piano, and in Melbourne he studied fashion and design. In Australia, he began to feel that he didn’t fit well with his conservative surroundings and became interested in London and the New Romantic club scene while reading British fashion magazines. Bowery then moved to London, where he worked in a clothing shop, did some commercials for Pepe jeans, and created promos for musical artists, including a promo for David Bowie’s Ashes To Ashes video. He soon became an influential and lively figure in the underground clubs of London and New York, as well as in art and fashion circles. He attracted attention by wearing wildly outlandish and creative outfits of his own making. He was known as a club promoter, and created the club called “Taboo”, which began as an underground party, and then opened as a club in 1985. Taboo soon became “the place to be” with long queues for those waiting to get in.
    [Show full text]
  • Underground Club Spaces and Interactive Performance
    Underground Club Spaces and Interactive Performance: How might underground club spaces be read and developed as new environments for democratic/participatory/interactive performance and how are these performative spaces of play created, navigated and utilised by those who inhabit them? Kathleen Alice O‟Grady Submitted in accordance with the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy The University of Leeds School of Performance and Cultural Industries December 2009 The candidate confirms that the work submitted is her own and that appropriate credit has been given where reference has been made to the work of others. This copy has been supplied on the understanding that it is copyright material and that no quotation from the thesis may be published without proper acknowledgement. Acknowledgements This thesis is dedicated to my parents who have always believed in me and to my daughter, Maisie, who is my source of inspiration and joy. Gratitude goes to my PhD supervisors Professor Mick Wallis and Dr Martin Crick, both of whom have given me continued support and guidance throughout this research. Thanks also to my colleagues and my students at the School of Performance and Cultural Industries who have encouraged me and kept me going with their sense of humour, wise words and loyalty. Thank you to all the club and festival organizers that have allowed me access to their events, particularly those involved with Planet Angel, Synergy, Duckie, Riff Raff, Planet Zogg, Speedqueen, Manumission, Shamania, Beatherder, Nozstock and Solfest. Special gratitude to Fatmoon Psychedelic Playgrounds for allowing me the room to move creatively and to develop this practice in a supportive environment.
    [Show full text]
  • 13 Twenty-First-Century Girl Lady Gaga, Performance Art, and Glam
    13 Twenty-First-Century Girl Lady Gaga, Performance Art, and Glam Philip Auslander Pop culture was in art, now art’s in pop culture in me. —Lady Gaga, “Applause” Introduction Although the glam sensibility that defined the first half of the 1970s, particu- larly in Britain, reached its fullest expression in popular music, the premise of the 2013 exhibition at Tate Liverpool, Glam: The Performance of Style, was that it also flowered in such other fields as performance, fashion, film, and visual art. Curator Darren Pih defines glam by saying that it “is characterized by its use of stylistic overstatement, reveling in revivalism, irony, theatricality, and androgyny, privileging surface effect and artifice over meaning” (2013, 11), all features that find expression in multiple media and artistic forms. In some cases, the connections between artists working in different fields were explicit: Bryan Ferry of Roxy Music studied with visual artist Richard Hamilton, while David Bowie regularly cited Andy Warhol as a key influence. Lady Gaga, “the first true millennial superstar” in pop music (Erlewine 2014), who went from playing clubs in New York City to international stardom in the course of just a few years, her stardom cemented by the 2008 album The Fame and its accompanying tour, is one of the key figures carrying the glam torch into the twenty-first century. Her stage name supposedly derives from Queen’s song “Radio Gaga,” and, as Simon Reynolds (2013) notes, her performances draw on “the glam theatricality and gender-bending [Bowie] pioneered.” But Gaga’s version of glam is distinctly twenty-first century in flavor.
    [Show full text]
  • From the Love Ball to Rupaul: the Mainstreaming of Drag in the 1990S
    FROM THE LOVE BALL TO RUPAUL: THE MAINSTREAMING OF DRAG IN THE 1990S by JEREMIAH DAVENPORT Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Department of Music CASE WESTERN RESERVE UNIVERSITY August, 2017 CASE WESTERN RESERVE UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF GRADUATE STUDIES We hereby approve the dissertation of Jeremiah Davenport candidate for the degree of PhD, Musicology. Committee Chair Daniel Goldmark Committee Member Georgia Cowart Committee Member Francesca Brittan Committee Member Robert Spadoni Date of Defense April 26, 2017 *We also certify that written approval has been obtained for any proprietary material contained therein. 2 Acknowledgements Thank you from the bottom of my heart to everyone who helped this dissertation come to fruition. I want to thank my advisor Dr. Daniel Goldmark, the Gandalf to my Frodo, who has guided me through the deepest quandaries and quagmires of my research as well as some of the darkest times of my life. I believe no one understands the way my mind works as well as Daniel and I owe him a tremendous debt of gratitude for helping me find the language and tools to write about my community and the art form I love. I also want to thank Dr. Georgia Cowart for helping me find my voice and for her constant encouragement. I am grateful to Dr. Francesca Brittan for her insights that allowed me to see the musicologist in myself more clearly and her unwavering support of this project. I also would like to thank Dr. Robert Spadoni for expanding my analytical skills and for constantly allowing me to pick his brain about drag, movies, and life.
    [Show full text]
  • Sex, Sin and Sausages
    Section:GDN 12 PaGe:10 Edition Date:180813 Edition:01 Zone: Sent at 10/8/2018 17:53 cYanmaGentaYellowbl Section:GDN 12 PaGe:11 Edition Date:180813 Edition:01 Zone: Sent at 10/8/2018 17:53 cYanmaGentaYellowbl • • Arts appeared, naked, in makeup His band Minty’s similar to blackface, for a Minty Design a penthouse – then feed the pigs publicity photo. residency was cut This preoccupation with the short after Bowery extreme off ended plenty of people . Clark stopped working with Bowery Why is this architecture fi rm so successful? Maybe it’s because chicks, A new jaw- ‘vomited’ vegetable when he insisted on wearing a dropping outfi t soup into his wife’s costume with “a cunt” written on it . lambs and pigs are part of the team. Oliver Wainwright reports every week … Minty saw their residency at the Bowery; left, in mouth on stage Soho club Freedom cut short one of Lucian because of a show that involved Freud’s paintings Bowery “vomiting” vegetable probably haven’t heard of soup into Bateman’s mouth . Bowery, his infl uence is present. Perhaps Bowery’s work was “ You see it in fashion, you see it in radical satire, all part of a life lived Off to the pig palace … the underground, you see it in without taboos. Shocking people the practice’s HQ at mainstream culture, in – and perhaps waking them up – Oasis Farm Waterloo; RuPaul’s Drag Race.” was the ultimate aim. Speaking below, feeding time It is in fashion that Bowery’s about a show at an Aids benefi t, infl uence is most explicit.
    [Show full text]
  • Maggi Hambling, Gilbert & George, Derek Jarman
    News Release Thursday 16 March 2017 MAGGI HAMBLING, GILBERT & GEORGE, DEREK JARMAN ... UNSEEN IMAGES OF 1980s LONDON ART AND CLUBS SCENE ON DISPLAY FOR FIRST TIME AT NATIONAL PORTRAIT GALLERY Derek Jarman and John Maybury by David Gwinnutt, c.1982–83 © David Gwinnutt; Maggi Hambling by David Gwinnutt, 1984 © David Gwinnutt; Cerith Wyn Evans by David Gwinnutt, circa 1984 © David Gwinnutt A new display of photographs, documenting the 1980s London art and club scene has opened at the National Portrait Gallery, London, it was announced today, Thursday 16 March 2017. The display features portraits of Leigh Bowery, Derek Jarman and Gilbert & George, many of which have not been previously exhibited. The display coincides with the acquisition by the Gallery of 14 portraits by the photographer David Gwinnutt that includes unseen images of artists Maggi Hambling and Duggie Fields, fashion designers Stephen Linard and David Holah and film makers Derek Jarman and John Maybury. The display David Gwinnutt: Before We Were Men (until 24 September 2017) captures the generation of young creatives that emerged in London against a backdrop of financial recession and unemployment in the early 1980s. The photographs of male directors, writers, designers and artists who together formed a vibrant and influential underground gay culture. Gwinnutt documented this scene while still at art college, having moved to London from Derbyshire in 1979. Two of the portraits acquired by the Gallery but not on display, are unseen portraits of film producer Alison Owen, mother of singer Lily Allen, whose credits as a producer include Elizabeth (1998), Shaun of the Dead (2004), The Other Boleyn Girl (2007), Brick Lane (2007), Saving Mr.
    [Show full text]