The Guardian view on 1980s counterculture: back to the future

The Guardian

04-03-2025

In 1980, 19-year-old Leigh Bowery arrived in London from the Melbourne suburb of Sunshine. He found a bedsit and a job in Burger King, while waiting to take on the capital's club and fashion scenes. That same year, the former New Musical Express and Smash Hits editor Nick Logan launched the magazine the Face on a shoestring from a basement on Carnaby Street. Bowery became one of the most influential avant garde figures of the era, the Face the 'style bible' for a generation.
Now these countercultural icons are being celebrated in shows at Tate Modern and the National Portrait Gallery. It doesn't get more mainstream. Over at Tate Britain, meanwhile, there is a sombre, largely black and white photographic retrospective of the decade. Outlaws, focusing on Bowery and his circle, is currently at London's Fashion and Textile Museum; later this year the Design Museum will showcase the pop culture magazine Blitz, also founded in 1980. The 80s are having a moment.
Documenting the decade's collisions of fashion, art and music, Leigh Bowery! at Tate Modern and The Face Magazine: Culture Shift at the NPG are luridly colourful explosions set against a bleak backdrop of Thatcherite austerity, racism and homophobia. One film montage shows Bowery and friends doing poppers superimposed on footage of the Brixton and Toxteth riots and headlines about Aids. They are partying while the world burns.
Post-punk and before the Young British Artists of the 1990s, Bowery and the Face were in opposition to the conservatism – and Conservatism – then dominating the country. Both set up their own clubs: Bowery literally with Taboo in the West End of London in 1985, the Face in its pages. Anyone could belong, regardless of class, race or sexuality, so long as they looked awesome. Taboo's mantra was 'dress as though your life depends on it, or don't bother'.
A photograph of Bowery – painted blue – appears in the exhibition about the Face. Constantly shapeshifting, Bowery strode through artistic milieux in sparkly platform boots. 'If you label me, you negate me,' he liked to say. In 1988 he put on a five-day solo performance, spotlit behind a two-way mirror, striking poses in a variety of his signature 'looks'. Later, he became a muse to Lucian Freud. Bowery's reinvention and exhibitionism anticipates the narcissism and voyeurism of social media. His whole life was a selfie.
In some ways, it was a better time to be young and an artist. Squats, council flats and even Margaret Thatcher's Enterprise Allowance Scheme (everyone at the Face in its early days was on it, apparently) meant vibrant artistic communities could flourish in the capital. Despite the debauchery, there was an innocence and spontaneity to this underground scene and its make-do-and-mend aesthetic – although some of their most provocative stunts now seem dated at best. As the critic Adrian Searle puts it: 'Wherever Bowery went, he went too far.'
Bowery died of an Aids-related illness in 1994 and, although the Face would continue for another decade, it was the last hurrah for British youth magazines. Pop culture was about to become globally homogenised by the internet. The party had to end.
There are economic, political and social parallels between the 1980s and today. Bowery and the Face showed that creativity could grow out of grim times. With their emphasis on gender fluidity, diversity and experimentalism, they were trailblazers. They deserve entry to the UK's most prestigious galleries – and they still look awesome.