Leigh Bowery in The Study Room
- Date
- 26 Feb 2025
To celebrate the launch of the Leigh Bowery exhibition at the Tate Modern, LADA has compiled a selection of rare archival documentation and related resources that live in our Study Room collection, including the film ‘Live Culture / Leigh Bowery at the Anthony d’Offay Gallery’ that features in the exhibition.
Performance artist, fashion designer, club promoter and legendary shape-shifter, Leigh Bowery constantly pushed against the boundaries of art and performance. His work stands as a playful, decadent and unruly challenge to sexuality and gender norms, employing a postmodern sensibility of excess and fluidity that positions the body as an ever-fluctuating canvas for his ideas. His influence continues to reverberate through performance art, visual art, fashion, drag, music and club culture today.
Below is a collection of items from LADA’s study room which offer some wider context on Leigh Bowery’s work and the influence it continues to hold. If you would like to view this collection of books and video documentation, you can book a slot to visit LADA’s Study Room in Bethnal Green.

Take a Bowery: The art and (larger than) Life of Leigh Bowery
Publication
Exhibition catalogue from Take a Bowery: The art and (larger than) Life of Leigh Bowery, at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Australia, 2003
Live Culture / Leigh Bowery at the Anthony d’Offay Gallery
Digital File
Film made by Cerith Wyn Evans
Documentation from Bowery’s 1988 performance at the Anthony d’Offay Gallery
The Legend of Leigh Bowery
DVD
Documentary film about Leigh Bowery, directed by Charles Atlas, 2002
Leigh Bowery – The Life and Times of an Icon
Publication
Author: Sue Tilley
A biography and tribute to a colourful unique and larger than life character, written in 1997 by his close friend Sue Tilley
Leigh!
Publication
Artist/Author: Donald Urquhart
A zine created to accompany a 2012 exhibition of Leigh Bowery’s costumes in Vienna called Xtravaganza: Staging Leigh Bowery, by Donald Urquhart a close fried of Leigh Bowery
Club Kids: From Speakeasies to Boombox and Beyond
Publication
Editor: Raven Smith
A visual study and critical analysis of the social trends relating to ‘club culture’ published in 2008
Looks
Publication
Artist/Author: Leigh Bowery
Editor: Fergus Greer
The a book documenting the looks created by Bowery from 1988 to 1994
Queer
Publication
Editor: David J. Getsy
Part of Whitechapel Gallery’s Documents of Contemporary Art series, a collection of anthologies which collect writing on major themes and ideas in contemporary art. This is the first anthology to bring together artist’s writings and conversations about queer practice
Monitorpop, No. 1
DVD
Artist/Author: Various (see content)
A compilation with exclusive interviews (Mark Stewart, Hermann Nitsch, Throbbing Gristle, Matthew Herbert etc.), short films, slide shows and music clips.
Carnivalesque
Publication
Artist/Author: Timothy Hyman, Roger Malbert
Exhibition catalogue from Carnivalesque, a 2000 exhibition at the Hayward Gallery in London that celebrated the imagery of Carnival in Western art
The Homosexual
Type: Digital File
Artist/Author: Adrian Howells
Documentation of 1993 performance of Adrian Howells and Leigh Bowery
Banner image credit:
Cerith Wyn Evans, Leigh_Bowery at the Anthony Doffay Gallery, 1988Latest news
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