Open Wide

In 1992, infamous fashion designer, model, performance artist and Taboo club promoter Leigh Bowery formed the band Minty (named after the Polari word for ‘snooty’) with friend, designer Richard Torry, wife Nicola, and promotor and performer Matthew Glamorre. Bowery was a massively influential pop art icon and experimental performance artist; his very existence has left a huge legacy upon popular culture. Minty was his musical vehicle to bestow his unique brand of art performance onto the world.

To mark 25 years since Leigh’s passing Minty are re-releasing their renowned 1997 album Open Wide on Record Store Day 2021. Preceded by the release of their cult club classic Useless Man in 2020, featuring new remixes by Boy George, Open Wide is the next chapter in the Minty story. Inheritors of the Post Punk and New Romantic club scene, Bowery and crew led a vicious and uncompromising charge into challenging not only values and morality but celebrity culture itself. At a time before the internet, it was scandalous talk and sensational press articles that brought the band to the attention of the authorities. Their famously avant-garde and shocking onstage scatological, blood and gore performances prompted The Sun newspaper to describe them as the "sickest band in the land" – a statement of which Leigh was immensely proud.

Since then the band have taken the baton of Bowery’s legacy and kept the artistic flame alive as well as continuing as aesthetes in their own right: Nicola Bowery is currently a designer and a performance artist. Matthew Glamorre is an audio visual artist who has worked consistently on the boundaries of music, art and technology – and as the director of Gryphon Records he wrote and produced music, artwork and film for the artist Bishi. Richard Torry is a multimedia artist, and musician based in London whose current retrospective exhibition in Paris is gaining much attention. Meanwhile Useless Man has become part of the soundtrack to the underground music and art scene playing on indie/ alt/ queer dancefloors across the globe. The flame lives on.

Bowery and Minty have undeniably influenced artists, musicians, comedians and designers across the decades and continue to do so: their music, now available in contemporary digital formats, further cements their place in the history of art and culture.