Skip to main content

Linder – Danger Came Smiling

5 stars

 Linder’s artistic roots in Manchester’s punk scene have rightly been lionised along with her taboo busting photomontages from that era. As vital and totemic as her early feminist subversions of pornography and women’s magazines remain, this Edinburgh iteration of her fifty year retrospective first presented at the Hayward Gallery in London makes clear that there has been a lot more going on since.

 

Outside, Linder gets back to nature with cut out shapes peeking from the trees, or else  standing proud in the pond. Inside, each section playfully defines Linder’s cut and paste aesthetic. This is as much the case with the elaborately patterned rug inspired by surrealist artist Ithel Colquhoun made for 2015 dance work Children of the Mantic Stain as it as it is for her 1977 photographs of Manchester drag artists.

 

More recent works such as The Liverpool Sphinx (2025) and The Pool of Life (2021) are mature examples of Linder’s oeuvre, supreme in confidence and execution. Elsewhere, flowers bring colour to monochrome classical works.  

 

Linder’s era defining image of a naked woman with an iron for a head that appeared on the cover of Buzzcocks’ ‘Orgasm Addict’ single has to be here. As too do the DIY gig posters, the Secret Public zine created with writer Jon Savage, and album art for post punk fabulists Magazine and Linder’s own band, Ludus.

 

As a whole, Danger Came Smiling might be viewed as one giant collage that gives new definition to the idea of a body of work.

 

Edinburgh Art Festival @ Inverleith House, Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh until October 19.


The List, August 2025

 

ends

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Billy Elliot The Musical

Edinburgh Playhouse Five stars A big National Coal Board sign looms large at the opening of Lee Hall and Elton John's decade-old musical stage version of Hall and director Stephen Daldry's hit turn of the century film. In a tale of one little boy's liberation as a dancer against the backdrop of the 1980s miners strike, however, the Durham Miners banner and the 'Save Our Community' sash held aloft matter more. It is this call to arms that forms the heart of Daldry's production, as Billy becomes a potty-mouthed beacon of hope in a situation where picket line, thin blue line and chorus line rub uneasily up against each other. Given such a context, there is bound to be some pretty grown-up stuff going on here, be it the institutionalised homophobia in Billy's village, the class war going on within it, or Billy's grieving for his dead mother that drives his every move. And, as so magnificently choreographed by Peter Darling, what moves they are. Watch...
Post a Comment
Read more

Myra Mcfadyen - An Obituary

Myra McFadyen – Actress   Born January 12th 1956; died October 18th 2024   Myra McFadyen, who has died aged 68, was an actress who brought a mercurial mix of lightness and depth to her work on stage and screen. Playwright and artistic director of the Royal Lyceum Theatre, Edinburgh, David Greig, called McFadyen “an utterly transformative, shamanic actor who could change a room and command an audience with a blink”. Citizens’ Theatre artistic director Dominic Hill described McFadyen’s portrayal of Puck in his 2019 production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream at the Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre in London as “funny, mischievous and ultimately heartbreaking.”   For many, McFadyen will be most recognisable from Mamma Mia!, the smash hit musical based around ABBA songs. McFadyen spent two years on the West End in Phyllida Lloyd’s original 1999 stage production, and was in both film offshoots. Other big screen turns included Rob Roy (1995) and Our Ladies (2019), both directed by Mi...
1 comment
Read more

Losing Touch With My Mind - Psychedelia in Britain 1986-1990

DISC 1 1. THE STONE ROSES   -  Don’t Stop 2. SPACEMEN 3   -  Losing Touch With My Mind (Demo) 3. THE MODERN ART   -  Mind Train 4. 14 ICED BEARS   -  Mother Sleep 5. RED CHAIR FADEAWAY  -  Myra 6. BIFF BANG POW!   -  Five Minutes In The Life Of Greenwood Goulding 7. THE STAIRS  -  I Remember A Day 8. THE PRISONERS  -  In From The Cold 9. THE TELESCOPES   -  Everso 10. THE SEERS   -  Psych Out 11. MAGIC MUSHROOM BAND  -  You Can Be My L-S-D 12. THE HONEY SMUGGLERS  - Smokey Ice-Cream 13. THE MOONFLOWERS  -  We Dig Your Earth 14. THE SUGAR BATTLE   -  Colliding Minds 15. GOL GAPPAS   -  Albert Parker 16. PAUL ROLAND  -  In The Opium Den 17. THE THANES  -  Days Go Slowly By 18. THEE HYPNOTICS   -  Justice In Freedom (12" Version) ...
Post a Comment
Read more