Leigh Bowery: how a Melbourne boy became a myth

29/10/2025 25 min
Leigh Bowery: how a Melbourne boy became a myth

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Episode Synopsis


Leigh Bowery was not a man you could overlook. Born in Sunshine, Melbourne, he left Suburbia for Soho, London, remaking himself into someone impossible to contain.At the club Taboo, he was ringmaster of chaos. For artist Lucian Freud, muse. For the queer underground, Leigh was revelation: proof that life itself could be spectacle, and spectacle survival.Tate Modern’s recent exhibition Leigh Bowery! brought his world back into focus, and the curator Fiontan Moran talks about Leigh’s legacy: how a Melbourne boy became a myth, and why he continues to matter today.