BRIGHTON.- Fans of Bowie have been given extra time to catch up with a highly acclaimed exhibition of intimate portraits of the star who died six years ago on 10 January 2016. The show was due to end this summer but has been extended until 23 January 2022 to allow fans to see the amazing collection of images by photographer Geoff MacCormack.
Brighton Museum & Art Gallery will also open on Mondays during January to allow visitors to see the show before it closes.
The show has been hugely successful. Over 60% of visitors to Brighton Museum & Art Gallery had made a special trip to see the show and we've welcomed over 27,000 visitors last year.
Visitors’ comments include
• “The Bowie exhibition is EXCELLENT. I have already taken two friends to see it and will almost certainly come again.”
• “Loved the Bowie exhibition.”
• “Am interested in photography as much as Bowie. The exhibition was excellent both as Bowie memorabilia and photography as an art.”
• “More exhibitions like the Bowie one. It was standout.”
MacCormack’s close friend from the age of 8 years old was David Jones, the boy who would become David Bowie and one of the most influential performers in music, fashion and theatrical stage craft of the twentieth century.
In 1973 Bowie called his childhood friend and suggested he join his band The Spiders from Mars and go on a worldwide adventure, travelling first class by sea to New York and then on to Japan. from Japan to Siberia, through Russia by Trans-Siberian Express. to Moscow for May Day Parade, Poland, East and West Germany, just in time for tea at the George V Hotel in Paris, followed by a relaxing holiday in Rome, just to chill out.
And just when Geoff thought the fun might be over, Bowie said; “Would you mind being a Diamond Dog and coming back to New York on an even better ship, eating caviar every day and joining another band, then another band, helping out on a few albums and generally hanging out and having the time of your life for a couple more years?”
Geoff did not hesitate and became Bowie’s backing singer and percussionist in 1973 on the Ziggy Stardust/Aladdin Sane world tour. Arriving in Japan, Geoff ditched his Kodak Instamatic camera in favour of a Nikon and began taking a few images here and there, starting in Siberia on the Trans-Siberian Railway and ending two and a half years later in Los Angeles during the Station To Station sessions.
Because Bowie disliked flying, they travelled together by cruise liner and trains across the world giving MacCormack and his camera the opportunity to capture Bowie at his most informal and relaxed.
From Ziggy Stardust and Aladdin Sane of Britain’s Glam Rock years, the ground-breaking Diamond Dogs tour across the USA and their obsession with American Soul music, to Bowie’s first major film The Man Who Fell to Earth (1975) and the recording of Station to Station and his Thin White Duke persona, this exhibition of intimate photographs some of which have never been seen before in a public exhibition, gives a glimpse of a close friendship, travel and life on the road with one of the greatest rock stars of all time.
The show includes up to 80 large original framed photographs of Bowie by MacCormack. These photographs are complemented by a short film shot by Bowie on their trip to Moscow in 1973, music videos of Bowie and MacCormack on stage together, film excerpts and music in the galleries.
