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- Edinburgh Reporter
Interview with Linder Sterling
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.
'The eye is courted all the time; everybody is staring at screens like mass hypnosis.'
'It's a very handsome city in a swanky way,' says Linder of her run in the capital. 'It 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't recall a light like it, and there's also the close proximity to the sea'.
Linder was one of the 'Manchester 50', 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.
'Everyone 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.'
Linder's pioneering, surrealist, and feminist artwork was featured on the cover of The Buzzcock's first single Orgasm Addict. The famous image displayed a woman's body with a domestic steam iron for a head. 'During punk, people were cutting themselves. I was lucky I didn't cut myself. I was cutting out pictures in magazines. I've 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's no engineering.'
Fifty years on, perhaps the best measure of a shift in society is perception from the public.
'There 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't see them as women encumbered, they saw them as cyborgs; that was a very exciting moment.'
Linder would also provide cover art for Howard Devoto's subsequent post-punk band Magazine and their first album Real Life. More recently, her work has explored the subject of deepfaking and digital violence. 'I follow the debate carefully, as we know a young woman's 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.' On the subject of social media, she adds, 'I think the eye is courted all the time, everybody is staring at screens like mass hypnosis, the eye never really stops, it's always binging.'
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.
'I 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't 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.'
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. 'I come from working-class Irish roots, I'm 70 now, and I've passed that passion onto my grandson. I've just bought him his first Liverpool shirt.'
More widely, of the city, she adds, 'I 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's lying around like newsprint.'
For the second time, Linder has designed her own incense. 'I 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.'
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's 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.
'I decided not to watch it, maybe one day. I've been asked to make a film about my life, but I'm in two minds, one of the reasons is to put the facts straight. There are offers on the table for my autobiography. I've been thinking about a book or a film, but it's been such a busy year.'
A book for an artist is a difficult proposition, especially as an essential part of the deal is to remain a mystery. 'Yeah, exactly, the mystery is what we all want and need from those we admire, but not in a dull way. I've not managed to have a reflective time yet, but I'll have to make my mind up very soon, if I did end up under a bus tomorrow, I'd like to think I've written an account of those times.'
Linder: Danger Came Smiling is on at the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh until 19 October.
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