Bowie Style tonight: In conversation with Boy George at the V&A
Tonight I am hosting an event at London’s Victoria & Albert Museum: an ‘in conversation’ with Boy George about the importance and influence of popular culture’s greatest manipulator of visual identity, David Bowie.
//George O'Dowd overlooked by Big Brother in his room at a squatted house in Carburton Street, central London, 1978.//
//Blue is the colour. With Philip Sallon, 1978.//
It hardly needs saying that the event coincides with the V&A’s current exhibition David Bowie Is, which is commanding near fever-pitch media interest.
Our mission is to provide an antidote to Bowie fatigue by looking at the ways in which his supreme control of visual media acted as an inspiration for George O’Dowd to achieve his own superstar status, with the assistance of music, archive footage and a selection of special images.
//David Bowie in suit designed by Derek Morton from Tommy Roberts' boutique City Lights Studio, 1973. This photograph, by Mick Rock, appeared on the back cover of Bowie's covers album Pin Ups and is among the exhibits in David Bowie Is.//
//David Bowie, Olympic Studios, January 1974, by Kate Simon.//
//Bowie, 2013. Photograph by Jimmy King in front of framed portrait of Bowie with William Burroughs taken by Terry O'Neill in February 1974.//
Like the exhibition, tonight’s event is sold out; here are some sneak peeks from the presentation, which will also include this interview with O’Dowd shot at The Foundry, the central London boutique he ran with designer Sue Clowes in 1982.