I first came across Leigh Bowery in the mid-Eighties when I was sharing a flat with two very close friends of his, Angus Cook and Cerith Wyn Evans. There’s a photo of the three of them in Tate’s new exhibition about him, on a ferry in Padstow. They look so young and beautiful in their own kind of strangeness. Although he’s famous for his astonishing outfits, in the picture, Leigh is wearing his ‘civvies’. When he wasn’t making art, he’d dress like an accountant from East Grinstead – maybe we would describe it now as ‘normcore’. A taupe wig, beige clothes, slip-on clogs. You could see his empty piercings, which would make me laugh; he looked like he had these lovely dimples.
When I think of Leigh, I think of him either dressed like that, or naked. Like me, Angus and Cerith would sit for my dad [Lucian Freud], and we sort of invited Leigh in. My father was really curious about him, so started to paint him, and then our paths overlapped a lot. All of us sitters were like an alternative family; we’d have a cup of tea together or a chat on the stairs. Leigh and I had a funny conversation once about being painted by my dad: I mentioned how he always starts with your eyes. Leigh paused and replied: ‘He doesn’t start with mine…’ He was witty and calm. My father had a very warm and gentle friendship with him.
Leigh once made a corset out of his paintbrushes. What he was doing – using his body as an art form in such an innovative and courageous way – is quite incredible. I’m so pleased this retrospective is happening, because I don’t think society recognises how inventive he was and how influential he has been.
I didn’t really move in Leigh’s art’s world, of costumes, clubbing and the famous shows, but I saw him dressed in that extraordinary way once or twice. What he did to himself and the shapes he made with his body were so different from anything you could imagine – I’ll admit that sometimes I found it disturbing, the way he coloured and contorted himself, but his body was his instrument. It was brave. I was an actress at the time, always trying to look pretty and get jobs, but he rather made me think, ‘Oh, there’s all sorts of things you can do with yourself. You don’t have to conform.’
I was extremely shocked when he died in 1994, because he didn’t tell anyone he was ill [with AIDS] and he went with unbelievable dignity. To me, he was unknowable, and sometimes made me feel quite shy because he was so unusual. When my father died, we were all allowed to choose something of his to keep, and I ended up with a red velvet chair that Leigh used to pose on. It’s in my house, so it makes me think of Leigh a lot. I like the Tate show’s title. He was worthy of an exclamation mark.
‘Leigh Bowery!’ is at Tate Modern until 31 August
