LINDER STERLING, Linderama, 2014
Edition of 50 + 1 AP
Numbered
Accompanied by a Certificate of Authenticity
Hand knotted
Wool & Silk
High / Low Cut

Linder Sterling (born 1954, Liverpool), commonly known as Linder, an prominent figure in the punk and post-punk Manchester music scene, is one of the most influential artists shaping the visual manifest of an artistic movement that rejected the social and political trajectory, out of which came bands like The Fall, Joy Division, The Buzzcocks, Magazine, The Smiths and Ludus, of which she was the lead singer. Her 30-year body of work of collages and photomontages is created with a methodology much in common with the subversive practices of the times: Ripping things apart and reassembling them as a way of showing the counterfeit quality and construction of any social image through juxtapositions that normally remain distinct. In addition to her work with collages, she has applied her assemblage tactics to photography, her own portraiture, collaborations and performances, taking possession of their various manifestations either independently or simultaneously. A feminist artist, a fundamental characteristic in her work is its arresting impact. Her collages are composed of elements that previously possessed a commonsense significance – evoking a disturbing impression of familiarity, more so by appropriating the very aesthetic of the glossy magazines whose images she cuts out from. The iconography heightens this feeling, inasmuch as they refer to standardized imagery as reflected in consumer society. Objects of claustrophobic domestic universe and beyond are brought into contact with pornography, where photographs of household objects, machines, cakes, animals or flowers – to name only a few – are intersected with images of nude women, enhancing their objectification as sexualized bodies. She famously designed the single cover for Orgasm Addict by the Buzzocks (1977), showing a naked woman with an iron for a head and grinning mouths instead of nipples. Linder's work is included in several public collections, including Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin; Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, Paris; Museum of Modern Art, New York and Tate Britain, London. For Henzel Studio, Linder re-appropriated her piece “Linderama” by adding a cutout silhouette with elevated and glossy silk-enhanced lips to emphasize the notion of collage.

“I try to short circuit the electrical charge of the images that I use, and sometimes it is necessary to intensify the erotic charge so that this happens.”
- Linder

Selected exhibitions: Nottingham Contemporary, Nottingham; Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, Paris; Tate St Ives, Cornwall & Museum of Modern Art/PS1, New York.

Images: (1) Linderama, 2014 (in-situ) (2) Linderama, 2014 (3) Linder Sterling, self-portrait, 1981-2010 © Linder Sterling. Courtesy of the artist; Modern Art, London; Dépendance, Brussels; Andréhn- Schiptjenko, Stockholm, Paris; and Blum & Poe, Los Angeles, New York, Tokyo.