Leigh Bowery
Leigh Bowery (Book)
Performative Costuming and Live Art
A deep dive into the practice of performance artist Leigh Bowery that reveals the fullness of his extravagant range. Explores how his performative costuming and live art have influenced visual culture and the expanded field of performance studies; a contribution until now largely obscured by Bowery’s cult status and importance to fashion 50 illus.
Edition
Leigh Bowery: Performative Costuming and Live Art is a critical exploration of the creative practice, social-historical context, and cultural impact of the late London-based artist Leigh Bowery. The diversity of Bowery’s work and his marginality as an artist who emerged during the 1980s from a subcultural milieu complicated and thwarted his cultural value, hindering his incorporation into art institutions and performance art narratives for some time. Drawing on a variety of disciplines and challenging research contexts, Sofia Vranou seeks to historicize Bowery’s multifaceted body of work and critically situate it within the expanded fields of visual culture and performance studies.
Through close analysis of Bowery’s key looks and non-theatrical performances, the book investigates the implications of his work in dominant histories of performance art and urgent discourses surrounding normativity, representations of illness, and identity politics. Thought-provoking and engaging, it focuses on Bowery’s costuming as a performative strategy that effectively blurs the boundaries between art and life; delves into his aesthetics of freakishness and narcissistic desire, reflects on his involvement with BDSM practices and the performance of extremity, and unpacks the posttranssexual ethos behind his hybrid embodiments and trans-queer visual language.
Sofia Vranou holds a PhD from Queen Mary University of London. She has a background in art history and visual cultures, and a strong interest in live art, queer aesthetics, performative costuming, subcultural histories and marginal identities.
Introduction: Larger Than Life
Chapter 1 Performative Costuming: Merging Fashion, Art, and Life
Chapter 2 The Subcultural Freak: Narcissism and the Disruption of Normativity
Chapter 3 Fabulously Painful: BDSM and the Performance of Extremity
Chapter 4 Beyond Drag: Trans-Queer Embodiments and Repronormativity
Epilogue: Bowery Futures
Bibliography
“This is an essential read for anyone interested in the critical relationship between culture, art, and material-corporeal expressive practices, where costume and performance serve as instrumental interventions in pressing social matters. Through Leigh Bowery’s provocative practice, this detailed and enlightening study navigates rich and relevant discourses implicated by his performance art. Emerging against the background of the HIV/AIDS crisis, it also articulates a diverse and anti-disciplinary legacy of acceptance and difference.”
