Reflections on ... Leigh Bowery! at Tate Modern

 

/ Portrait of Leigh Bowery by Nick Knight, 1992 /

“In his brief life Bowery was described as many things. Among them: fashion designer, club monster, human sculpture, nude model, vaudeville drunkard, anarchic auteur, pop surrealist, clown without a circus, piece of moving furniture, modern art on legs. However, he declared if you label me, you negate me and always refused classification, commodification and conformity. Bowery was fascinated by the human form and interested in the tension between contradictions. He used makeup as a form of painting, clothing and flesh as sculpture and every environment as ready-made stage for his artistry. Bridging the gap between art and life, he took on different roles and then discarded them, presenting an understanding of identity that was never stable but always memorable. Bowery embraced difference, often using embarrassment as a tool both to release his own inhibitions and those of people around him. He wanted to shock with his looks and performances. At a time of increasing conservative values in Britain, Bowery refashioned ideas around identity, morality and culture. At times, this caused offence ...” 

This is the introductory text at the exhibit Leigh Bowery! at Tate Modern. (Boy, is that exclamation point warranted!), which probes the life and times of debauched post-punk drag monster, performance artist, nightclub promoter, fashion designer, artist’s model, muse, musician, Australia’s twisted gift to the world and all-round visionary Leigh Bowery (1961 - 1994). I visited it on Sunday, and it scrambled my brains in the best possible way. I’m still processing it! The images Bowery created remain freaky, nightmarish and beautiful, un-mellowed by the passage of time. (Even “off-duty”, Bowery sought to freak out the squares, wanting to resemble “the weirdo on the street that you tell your mum about”). I was particularly struck by his collaborations with bad boy of dance Michael Clark and ferocious post-punk band The Fall and a video clip by Charles Atlas of Bowery miming to an old Aretha Franklin song, a pair of novelty red lips from a joke shop affixed to his face with safety pins. The exhibit is on until 31 August 2025. Here are my pics!

Joey Arias: Once, Twice, Three Times A Motherfucking Lady in Satin

“The look is Jane Russell crossed with Morticia Addams, the sound is pure Billie Holiday ...” Time Out

In the 1950s Sarah Vaughan's admirers nicknamed her “The Divine One”. But she’s been dead for years – it’s surely overdue that the sublime Joey Arias inherit that title. A group of friends and I saw him perform at London’s Soho Theatre on 5 October. Arias is old school bohemian Mondo New York royalty, an ageless enigma, an alien, an apparition (he’s rumoured to be 64 in human years, not that you’d guess). He’s been performing and honing his night club act for over three decades, whipping together jazz and cabaret torch songs, performance art, drag and comedy (of the blue variety - Arias has the toilet mouth of a truck stop whore) into a purring consistency.  Mainly he evokes the essence of doomed jazz chanteuse Billie Holiday in a manner that’s simultaneously eerie, haunting, filthy and hilarious  ... while chewing gum and doing deep stripper squats, frequently stripped-down to nothing but fetish-y Bettie Page black lingerie.

I hadn't seen La Arias perform since 1996 – the memory of that was spine-tingling. It was at the tiny Freedom Theatre space in the basement of the Freedom bar on Wardour Street. In those days they regularly hosted outré avant garde performance stuff by the likes of Leigh Bowery (I also saw The Lady Bunny there). I was there with a female friend called Wendy. We were awe-struck by Arias. He opened with a wrenching version of Holiday’s “You've Changed.” His face was like a Kabuki mask; his sleek black patent leather hair was twisted into a Joan Crawford-in-Mildred Pierce 1940s pompadour. His stark monochromatic make-up made Arias look like an escapee from some 1940s black and white film noir B-movie. Later, Arias was prowling through the crowd singing, spotted Wendy, dramatically stopped and stared as if transfixed by her - and leaned down and kissed her on the lips (you know that scene in Morocco where Marlene Dietrich in full butch top-hat-and-tuxedo-male drag kisses a woman in the audience on the mouth? It was an exact re-enactment of that!). Post-kiss Wendy was blushing, flushed and dazzled – with a perfect jet black lip imprint smack on the side of her mouth!

Flash forward to present-day Soho Theatre: taking the stage in a sensational nude-look, tightly-corseted Thierry Mugler gown and backed by piano virtuoso Jeremy Brennan, Arias mixed jazz standards (“I Hear Music”, “All of Me”, “Them There Eyes”, “Why Don’t You Do Right?”) with a wild mix of rock and pop songs (imagine Billie Holiday tackling The Beatles’ “A Hard Day’s Night”, Led Zepplin, Cream and “Be My Baby” by The Ronettes). Cavorting in lingerie and stockings, a down-and-dirty Arias reveled in rancid behavior. Beckoning a boy from the front row onstage, Arias unbuttoned his jeans, shoved his microphone down the front of his boxers and proceeded to serenade his crotch. Then, for his encore Arias transformed into a tragedienne, singing two of Holiday’s most exquisite heartbreak ballads (“Don’t Explain” and “You've Changed”) back-to-back in a heart-tugging smoky-voiced rasp so beautifully awash with sadness and anguish it made my friend Alison cry – which then made me cry.

/ Two shots of Arias channeling Billie Holiday and casting a spell onstage, snatched by my friend Alison /

Onstage Arias suggests not just Lady Day, but a whole lost tradition of fierce, commanding divas of a certain vintage: think boozy Tallulah Bankhead or scary late-period, taut-faced Marlene Dietrich. I've seen the likes of Eartha Kitt and Juliette Greco perform – maybe it sounds perverse, but Arias is their post-punk equal in artistry and charisma.  When I got home I immediately put on Billie Holiday's 1958 masterpiece Lady in Satin and swooned.

/ My favourite shot of the night. I call it "Two Fierce Bitches": after the concert, I glanced up to see my friend Alison and Joey deep in conversation, hugging. I rummaged through Alison's handbag, found her digital camera and caught this historic encounter for posterity. I treasure this photo! /

/ Stunning portrait of Joey Arias backstage at The Soho Theatre on the final night of his residency by the ultra-talented photographer Adrian Lourie /

/ From the same session: another intimate backstage shot of Arias in his dressing room at The Soho Theatre, this time by the very talented Fannar Gudmundsson. The form-fitting black gown he’s slithering into was astonishing: you catch a glimpse of the architectural corsetry going on inside it here /

Performance Art Royalty: David Hoyle and Penny Arcade at The Royal Vauxhall Tavern

Dynamic duo Penny Arcade and David Hoyle onstage causing chaos at The Royal Vauxhall Tavern

On 21 June 2012 I attended the final night of David Hoyle's triumphant latest residency (entitled Pandregina: a programme of 'entertainment' for the post-political, pre-apocalyptic age) at The Royal Vauxhall Tavern. I went with Rachael Halliwell, Allan Taylor (who "transcends gender", by the way. At least that’s what Hoyle announced from the stage when he saw him) and Steve Millar. Bravely, we sat right by the front.

It was a spectacular night of performance art royalty. As well as Hoyle (on typically ferocious and scathing form) there were several special guests: porn star Ashley Ryder (who screened an eye-popping / eye-watering hardcore short film), Sjaak van Der Bent (who merits comparison to Klaus Nomi) and Al Pillay (who sang some spine-tingling torch songs).

I was especially keen to see New York underground theatre legend Penny Arcade again, who’s currently in town with her one-woman show Bitch! Dyke! Faghag! Whore! I’ve long been a fan of this tiny, volcanic force-of-nature – she’s the she-wolf/ earth mother / Anna Magnani of performance art. (Last Spring when Penny was in town sorting out the red tape for bringing Bitch! Dyke! Faghag! Whore! to London we liaised about me interviewing her for Nude magazine. Sadly in the end her schedule didn't permit it).

In Penny’s volatile performance piece she was “in-character” as tragic Andy Warhol Superstar Andrea Feldman. (Unstable and drug-addled poor little rich girl and Max’s Kansas City habitué Feldman committed suicide aged 24 in 1972. She was a totally idiosyncratic and unforgettable raspy-voiced comedienne and screen presence in the films Imitation of Christ (1967), Trash (1970) and Heat (1972).)

Afterwards, Hoyle invited Penny back again and it was just the two of them riffing onstage together. They were brilliant and lacerating. Hoyle was asking her about how New York has changed for her over the decades, which led to a discussion about gentrification. New York hasn’t been the edgy centre of bohemia now for years, Penny argued. She sang the praises of London, saying this is now the artistic world centre. Hoyle talked about how the middle classes all want to move into the city centres because they’re buzzing, cosmopolitan and happening – and then they complain about the noise of bars and nightclubs keeping them and their children awake, and campaign to get them closed! This led to a lamentation about middle class people and their precious children. Penny explained when she sees them on the street she wants to scream, “Your children AREN’T special!”

At the end for the finale everyone came back out and sang “Where Have All The Flowers Gone?” together. Then Hoyle serenaded each of them with a long, drawn-out and eerie “You Made Me Love You” (when he sings that jazz standard, he makes it sound like the music a stalker hears in their head).

Viva the avant-garde!

I managed to snap a few photos ...





Further reading: check out some photos I took of Penny Arcade onstage at the club night Duckie at The Royal Vauxhall in April 2011 here

No Wave's Baby-Faced Death Kitten

A clip from the underground film Guérillère Talks of baby-faced teenage juvenile delinquent Lydia Lunch delivering an outburst of bile in 1978. In a Warholian move, filmmaker Vivienne Dick keeps the camera running for a good minute and a half after she's finished!



Read more about the cinematic collaboration between Lydia Lunch and Vivienne Dick here