The Incredible Edible Leigh Bowery

You are walking down a hot street. The sun beats down on your flaming skull as you drag yourself through another day in the indifferent city. You find yourself passing by the same boring flies on the asses of humanity as you make your way through the winding corridors of urban living. Cast down, you make yourself completely oblivious to the world around you. It seems like the average weekday afternoon.... until you see a gigantic cloth covered humanoid walking your way. A humanoid with bright red lips, a tall frame, and a gaudy dress to boot. You watch in shock as the head to toe fabric explosion passes by you, swaying with the sounds of the street. What the hell? Are you under the influence of some new psychedelic? Has god decided to play a trick on your poor soul? Nope. You've been officially touched by the genius of Leigh Bowery.

Leigh Bowery is perhaps the most fabulous thing to have ever come out of Australia (sorry kangas, you lose). When he was a boy he loved to sew and talk gossip with his mother's friends. Bowery took his talent for sewing as well as his gift for gab to London in 1980. There he would blossom from a nobody to the stunning work of art that he is known for today. He plunged himself into a polysexual play land with tantalizing designs and bizarre feminine outerwear. In 1985 he started a uproarious jungle of a nightclub named Taboo. There Bowery would flaunt in his new styles, dance hyperactivity, and randomly embarrass everyone he met. His energy and love for life pushed his work onto the masses. Soon he became the centerfold for everything awe worthy and strange. He was not the artist, he was the art. His work soon reached other areas such as music and even dance. It seemed as if nothing could stop his booming career. Nothing, that is, but the hand of death itself.

Bowery's personal life mirrored much of what his art represented. He was known for odd trysts with odd individuals. Sex was the unexplored playground that he longed to run merrily in. Sadly, his experimental lifestyle eventually caught up with him. On December 31, 1994 he died of AIDS, he was only 33. The inspiration he brought to this world lives on forever in the works of artists such as Boy George and The Scissor Sisters who defy the laws of culture and taste alike. Leigh Bowery was a legend in his own right, a towering inferno above the skies of conformity. With one look at his maniacal painted face one can see that same conviction that lied in his bright booming eyes so long ago. It's a conviction that says Goddammit, I'm going to flaunt this dress and you are going to fucking love it baby!, it's a conviction that starts miracles, it's a conviction that makes infants cry, it's a conviction that could only belong to the chemical waterfall that is Leigh Bowery.