This summer, Scotland will see a significant new performance work in two parts from the seminal artist Linder, presented across two prestigious locations. Titled A Kind of Glamour About Me and staged initially at Mount Stuart on the Isle of Bute, the performance opens an exhibition of the same name, which runs until August 31, 2025. The second performance launches Edinburgh Art Festival 2025 on August 7, coinciding with the Scottish presentation of Linder: Danger Came Smiling at Edinburgh’s Inverleith House, Royal Botanic Garden, until October 2025, following the inaugural run this spring at London’s Hayward Gallery.
Co-commissioned by EAF and Mount Stuart Trust, A Glamour About Me has been created by Linder in collaboration with choreographer Holly Blakey, composer Maxwell Sterling and fashion designer Ashish Gupta. The word “Glamour” is also a named section of “Danger Came Smiling,” spanning five decades of the artist’s work, and will continue touring until Spring 2026. Here, Linder answers questions about both works:
Liverpool-born Linder—first weaponised scissors and glue in the mid-1970s, hacking through women’s magazines and softcore pornography to create photomontages that exposed the violent absurdity of consumer culture. Her razor-sharp collages didn’t just critique the male gaze; they disembowelled it, grafting domestic appliances onto pin-up girls with surgical precision.
The 1977 Buzzcocks single Orgasm Addict bore her most infamous work—Pretty Girl No. 2—where a smiling housewife’s head sprouts an iron where her mouth should be. It became the visual manifesto of punk’s feminist underground. But Linder was never content with static images. As frontwoman of post-punk outfit Ludus, she turned performances into live collage: part cabaret, part exorcism of bourgeois femininity.
Forty years on, her practice—spanning costume design, light installations, and ritualistic performances—still operates like a scalpel on body politics. Anna Goodman finds out more…
Why does ‘glamour’ resonate so much, and how does it manifest in your practice?
Glamour – Borrowed from the Scottish Sir Walter Scott, is a spell, an enchantment, an optical weapon. I’m not interested in the surface shimmer but in the undercurrent, the manipulative dazzle that cloaks power, seduction, and control. Glamour, to me, is both blade and balm: it binds, it blinds, it liberates. In Danger Came Smiling, it’s not passive – it’s performative, transgressive, and laced with danger. You’re seduced, yes – but also seducing back.
Has Mount Stuart influenced the work? Have you visited Bute before?
Mount Stuart is like stepping into a cathedral. Stained glass whispers, velvet sighs, and every corner pulse with the occult. I’d never been to Bute before this project; arriving felt like slipping through the back of the wardrobe. The building isn’t a backdrop; it’s a collaborator. A kind of Gothic coquette, I don’t do site-specific work; I do site-possessed work. The house haunts me back.
How are Ashish Gupta, Maxwell Sterling and Holly Blakey involved?
Each of them is a true collaborator; this project is made up of many. Ashish tailors the skin of his models – his garments are like armour stitched in sequins, textiles that speak in dialects of camp, gender and rupture. Maxwell’s music acts as the base note of the performance; it’s like the pulse of a seance, classical strings colliding with alien signals. Holly moves like she’s been possessed by Isadora Duncan and a punk banshee at once. Her choreography unlocks secret codes written into the body. Together, we will create a kind of ritual rather than a performance.
Would you like to create performances more often? Will A Kind of Glamour About Me tour?
Yes. A thousand times, yes. Performance is alchemy, the collision of time, body, sound, and image. But it demands a kind of spiritual exorcism. I would perform more if I had a second body to house the aftermath. As for touring, absolutely. This is not a one-night spell. It needs to be recast, recharged, and reborn in new soil. EAF is the next stop!
Why is now a moment for artists like yourself and Ithell Colquhoun? Cosmic artists, so to speak…
Because the veil is thinning. Again. The rational world has failed us—capitalism has hollowed out reason. The cosmic is not escapism—it’s a resistance.
We’re both conduits, as well as creators. And maybe now, finally, the world is ready to listen to the frequency we’ve always been tuned to.
In Danger Came Smiling, the photomontages, dating from the mid-1970s, which fuse domestic items and backdrops with objectified forms, have maintained their power over the decades. The untitled nude in the Saucepan and Pretty Girl series, for example. Why do you think these works still resonate? Because the wound never closed. Because Pretty Girl is still being chopped up – digitally, algorithmically, erotically. The nude in the saucepan? She’s not satire; she’s prophecy. Those images slice through time. They were never just about 1976. They’re about now, tomorrow, yesterday’s Instagram filter. They are mirrors that won’t flatter you.
The 1990s saw the onset of ‘Lad Mag’ culture, and there’s more recent deepfake misogyny. Did you feel that your work responded to these cultural shifts?
Invertedly, directly, psychically. My work is like an anti-virus—detecting, distorting, and disrupting. Where Lad Mags commodified the male gaze, I corrupted it. Where deepfakes try to steal reality, I collage it into weaponry. Punk gave us noise; I made images that screamed just as loud.
Do you honour the original models in your repurposed pornographic images?
Yes. Completely. The gaze in my work is not scornful; it’s sacred. Men framed those women, but I reframed them as goddesses, martyrs, and monsters.
How does Inverleith House compare to the Hayward Gallery?
Inverleith is full of breath, of chlorophyll and ghosts. The Hayward is concrete—a brutalist bunker. Both are perfect. One is a womb, the other a war room.
Inverleith lets the flowers in; the works will bloom, wither, twist into something new. I love showing the same work in radically different spaces; it forces the pieces to evolve and grow.
Given that Danger Came Smiling contains a selection of vitrine or cabinet-style works, are more 3D sculptural works to come?
Yes, I’m currently working on a new yet-to-be-announced commission that involves creating three sculptural works for a public space. After many years of working primarily with paper ephemera, it’s been a joy to explore a more permanent medium. One of the project’s requirements was that the works be built to last for 50 years, which has opened up exciting new possibilities. There’s something powerful about channelling collective hopes and desires through steel — a material that carries its sense of resilience and resolve. It feels especially relevant now as we navigate increasingly uncertain times. Perhaps we all need to find a bit more steel in ourselves; let the arts offer some solace as we do.
Top Photo: Linder at the Royal Botanic Gardens Edinburgh for EAF and Mount Stuart, 2025. Photo: Charlotte Cullen.
A Kind of Glamour About Me, staged initially at Mount Stuart on the Isle of Bute, opens an exhibition of the same name, which runs until August 31, 2025.
Linder: Danger Came Smilin Edinburgh Art Festival 2025 on August 7, Edinburgh’s Inverleith House, Royal Botanic Garden, until October 2025