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Liverpool-born artist Linder Sterling has remained a powerful female force in British art for fifty years. Her current exhibition, Linder: Danger Came Smiling, a retrospective, is currently on show at the Royal Botanic Gardens in Edinburgh.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe eye is courted all the time; everybody is staring at screens like mass hypnosis.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s a very handsome city in a swanky way,\u201d says Linder of her run in the capital. \u201cIt has a unique identity, and most people are welcoming and talkative; it reminds me of growing up in Liverpool, there is that same openness and curiosity. When you get that light in the summer, I can\u2019t recall a light like it, and there\u2019s also the close proximity to the sea\u201d. <\/p>\n
Linder was one of the \u2018Manchester 50\u2019, a group of artists and musicians based in the city that went on to define British pop culture. A seismic event and one that set Linder on her path was a Sex Pistols concert in 1976. <\/p>\n
\u201cEveryone was there at the Lesser Free Trade Hall. The person taking my money, which was 50p, was Johnny Rotten. He was wearing a lurex, retro Teddy boy suit, and later he was on stage where this glorious din was happening. No doubt, it changed the path of my life and that of many others, such as Howard Devoto and The Buzzcocks. Something very magical was happening; there was a glamour and a bewitching quality. Sir Walter Scott might have been disarmed by that amount of glamour in one room; there was definitely something at play.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Linder\u2019s pioneering, surrealist, and feminist artwork was featured on the cover of The Buzzcock\u2019s first single Orgasm Addict. The famous image displayed a woman\u2019s body with a domestic steam iron for a head.\u00a0 \u201cDuring punk, people were cutting themselves. I was lucky I didn\u2019t cut myself. I was cutting out pictures in magazines. I\u2019ve no idea the claustrophobic effect of the domestic sphere (with the art), I just let it happen. I never push, even with the photo montages, there\u2019s no engineering.\u201d<\/p>\n
Fifty years on, perhaps the best measure of a shift in society is perception from the public. <\/p>\n
\u201cThere is always that multiplicity of meanings. I never attached a meaning, and I struggle to say what any of the work is about. When I heard some young women talking about the photomontages of the female figures, they didn\u2019t see them as women encumbered, they saw them as cyborgs; that was a very exciting moment.\u201d<\/p>\n
Linder would also provide cover art for Howard Devoto\u2019s subsequent post-punk band Magazine and their first album Real Life. More recently, her work has explored the subject of deepfaking and digital violence. \u201cI follow the debate carefully, as we know a young woman\u2019s life can be destroyed by a holiday picture being glued into a pornographic body, that must be hellish if you are in a small village somewhere and everyone has that image of you.\u201d\u00a0 On the subject of social media, she adds, \u201cI think the eye is courted all the time, everybody is staring at screens like mass hypnosis, the eye never really stops, it\u2019s always binging.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Born in 1954, Linder grew up during Beatlemania, her local councillor was British Prime Minister Harold Wilson, and the Liverpool team she supported with her father were managed by legendary Scot Bill Shankly. <\/p>\n
\u201cI thought everyone had a Beatles down the road or that everyone had a councillor like Harold Wilson. There was an intimacy in those formative years. I didn\u2019t have pictures of The Beatles on my wall because it was like putting your brothers up. I watched Beatlemania happen in real time, and Cilla (Black) was like someone in the family, but a working-class pop star from Liverpool. In the way she would walk up to a microphone unadorned and sing, it was very powerful.\u201d<\/p>\n
While cutting pictures out of magazines would help define her as an artist, it began by cutting out pictures of Liverpool players for her bedroom wall during a post-war childhood. \u201cI come from working-class Irish roots, I\u2019m 70 now, and I\u2019ve passed that passion onto my grandson. I\u2019ve just bought him his first Liverpool shirt.\u201d<\/p>\n
More widely, of the city, she adds, \u201cI think about Liverpool as being a port, looking at the Mersey and looking out to America and this huge expanse with a sense of freedom. When I think of the port, I think of pilfering and light-fingeredness, and I see how that comes into my work; cutting up precious books or having a magpie eye open for what\u2019s lying around like newsprint.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u00a0For the second time, Linder has designed her own incense. \u201cI had to wear a vest for 24 hours to extract my factory DNA and was wearing it when I went to see Morrissey perform in Manchester.\u201d<\/p>\n
Linder has enjoyed a long and close friendship with the singer since she moved to Manchester during the 1970s. While Morrissey has written an autobiography, it\u2019s still something Linder is considering. She was also portrayed by Downton Abbey actress Jessica Brown Findlay in England Is Mine (2017), a biographical drama about the early life of Morrissey, with Jack Lowden playing the Irish-Mancunian singer. <\/p>\n
\u201cI decided not to watch it, maybe one day. I\u2019ve been asked to make a film about my life, but I\u2019m in two minds, one of the reasons is to put the facts straight. There are offers on the table for my autobiography. I\u2019ve been thinking about a book or a film, but it\u2019s been such a busy year.\u201d<\/p>\n
A book for an artist is a difficult proposition, especially as an essential part of the deal is to remain a mystery. \u201cYeah, exactly, the mystery is what we all want and need from those we admire, but not in a dull way. I\u2019ve not managed to have a reflective time yet, but I\u2019ll have to make my mind up very soon, if I did end up under a bus tomorrow, I\u2019d like to think I\u2019ve written an account of those times.\u201d<\/p>\n
Linder: Danger Came Smiling is on at the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh until 19 October.<\/a><\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\n