[BOWERY, Leigh (1961 - 1994)]. GREER, Fergus. (b. 1964). Leigh Bowery, 1991. 

Silver gelatin prints (2). Image size: 16 x 20" [50.5 x 40.5 cm]. Together with dated and attributed printed labels, affixed on verso of prior mounts. The full sheets measuring: 31 1/2 x 38 1/4". 

Two photographs of extraordinary size and impact, depicting the boundary-breaking artist whose mix of shape-shifting costumes and sensationalist theatricality made him a trailblazer of progressive performance. Bowery may be seen wearing the taffeta pompom and outfit on the left in his appearance on the Joan Rivers show in 1993. 

"Leigh Bowery’s place in fashion, art and popular culture is seditionary. The fashions he created were not worn on the streets, very rarely seen in daylight, or generated for mass consumption. His dress style hailed from club culture, and the concepts of dressing up and masquerade....After 1990 Bowery stopped using fancy decorations on his clothing, instead, his work became much more abstract and surreal....Bowery had already attempted to distort his own body with unorthodox combinations of clothing forms and the deception of make-up. The Pregnant tutu head‘s top has a protruding belly suggesting the silhouette of a pregnant woman and the continuation of the species; it is worn with stretch pants....The headpiece is formed like a large pompom made from tiers of orange tulle frills zipping up the back; the wearer encapsulated in a puff of fabric." (Robyn Healy, "Taboo or Not Taboo, the fashions of Leigh Bowery," ART JOURNAL, 2 June, 2014)
 

Moderate surface creasing and area of tone bleaching to one print, else fine.