Open up and let the shame in… It will set you free

Halfway around the Tate’s new Leigh Bowery show, my friend, Sophie, said to me, “Wait, why does this look like history when it feels like only 10 minutes ago?” We were admiring photos taken at nightclubs and while we were very much not there, in the backgrounds squinting awkwardly at the flash with backcombed hair, it felt as if we could have been.

This was the – I suppose – narcissism I brought to the exhibition with me, riding on my shoulder like a chip or a parrot. Maybe it’s always there when looking at art – the connection and liberation that comes from seeing parts of yourself reflected. But this time, marvelling at Bowery’s performances and otherness, I was acutely aware of searching for myself in this story about a time that, despite being more than 30 years ago, seems so close. Perhaps because it represents, for me, the first dangerous feelings of freedom. This was what I was thinking about – freedom and also embarrassment, a tool that Bowery sharpened and used as a poker.

Over turmeric tea one evening, double Oscar winner Cate Blanchett talks about the secret of relationships and how to survive the current news cycle. The answer? Jump into the ice…

Cate Blanchett saw in the New Year in the Arctic, with her husband and four children, by cutting a hole in the ice and jumping in. It was -30C and she wore a “funny hat” for the cold and, “It was fabulous,” because, she says, “Everything… paused.” It’s February now, and the restaurant near the river is just beginning to fill with evening diners when Blanchett slides between the tables in her tartan “chicken feeding coat” and striped shirt, collar popped. “Who are they murdering out the back?” she shouts – the noise of dough being pounded in the kitchen sounds as if they’re beating somebody to death and means we need to lean in, over her pot of turmeric tea. “I always thought, if the acting thing didn’t work out, which it still might not, I would love to be a Foley artist,” creating sound effects for film, smashing watermelons, clicking cups. “Yes, I can burp to order.” Oh? “Not fart, though. One of my primary school friends, vomiting sounds was her trick. Are you any good at noises?” I attempt, quite sweetly, a generic beatbox. “That sounded slightly like a kangaroo. I’ve been away from Australia a long time, though, so…”

Of course she can burp to order. She is Cate Blanchett, two-time Oscar winner, one of our greatest living actors. This is a person who, at 55, is balancing Hollywood movie stardom and motherhood (her eldest is 23; the youngest, who she and husband Andrew Upton adopted in 2015, nine), while also maintaining the freedom to regularly veer away from the family blockbusters or exquisite thrillers and take a part that is gloriously insane, like a German prime minister set upon by wanking bog-men (Rumours, 2024) or a female spider (Red, 2017) or, following her Oscar nomination for Tár (she remains the most nominated Australian, a feat!), the dancer in a Sparks video (The Girl Is Crying in Her Latte, 2023). The women she plays (and, as in her sly portrayal of Bob Dylan, men) are unpredictable, inscrutable and occasionally icy. Which takes us back to the Arctic.