In June final yr I used to be strolling with the artist Linder Sterling within the historical coastal woodlands slightly below Mount Stuart, a spectacular Nineteenth-century Gothic home on the Scottish island of Bute. It was a sunny morning, however all of a sudden the ambiance modified. A robust gust of wind shook leaves and brought about boughs to creak, whereas gnarled trunks and twisted branches appeared to loom a little bit nearer. The second handed, however we each felt it. Certainly, that intense, inexplicable frisson, which Linder described on the time as “a drive”, reverberated by means of each iterations of A type of glamour about me, her highly effective new efficiency work co-commissioned by Mount Stuart Belief and Edinburgh Artwork Competition, and offered in two Scottish areas this summer time.
On the premiere within the towering, colonnaded Marble Corridor of Mount Stuart, 4 dancers held the viewers in thrall with a collection of erotic, ritualised encounters through which identities slipped, energy balances shifted and historical forces appeared to stir, all guided by Linder’s son Maxwell Sterling’s improvised music. Shimmering sculptural costumes turned protagonists, as did a big forked tree department which shapeshifted to grow to be antlers, a yoke, a spear and a bier. Although I used to be surrounded by Victorian opulence, at instances I used to be transported again to feeling peculiar within the woods.
Linder is finest recognized for the photomontages she has made for the reason that Nineteen Seventies, which have concerned her slicing and splicing photos from trend magazines and softcore pornography, to problem and subvert gender stereotypes, consumerism and societal norms within the course of. My first Linder encounter was again in 1978 when, aged 17, I purchased the band Buzzcocks’s single Orgasm Addict, with its sleeve emblazoned together with her notorious picture of a girl with a steam iron for a head and teeth-baring smiles instead of nipples. However proper from the beginning Linder additionally embraced the disruptive energy of stay efficiency, most notoriously in 1982 when, as frontwoman of post-punk band Ludus—and a few years earlier than Woman Gaga’s meat costume—she carried out at Manchester’s Hacienda membership in a bodice product of hen carcasses and a strap-on dildo.
Linder on the Royal Botanic Gardens Edinburgh for EAF and Mount Stuart; 2025. Photograph: Charlotte Cullen. Stylist: Rebecca Palmer. Make-up: Kala Williams. Courtesy the artist and EAF
The harmful sense of disquiet that runs by means of A type of glamour about me is mirrored within the work’s title, which comes from the diaries of Walter Scott. Scott was drawing on the phrase’s origins within the early 18th-century Scottish time period glamer, which means a spell or enchantment, and whereas up to date glam abounded within the glittering costumes of the dancers in Linder’s efficiency—created by the high-fashion designer Ashish Gupta, recognized for cladding the likes of Rihanna, Beyoncé and Cate Blanchett in sequinned extravaganzas—she is equally eager to emphasize the darker, extra magically subversive meanings. She declared in an interview with Artlyst: “I’m not within the floor shimmer however within the undercurrent, the manipulative dazzle that cloaks energy, seduction, and management. Glamour, to me, is each blade and balm: it binds, it blinds, it liberates.”
A near-bacchanalian sense of liberation coursed by means of the work’s second iteration, which passed off in a grove of oak timber in Edinburgh’s Royal Botanic Backyard. On this outside setting the spirit was extra uncooked and—actually—earthier because the dancers shed their costumes to carry out half bare, pulling up and even biting fistfuls of leaves and soil. As with all Linder’s performances, each side was improvised, with the assured precision of the dancer’s actions a testomony to the choreographer and common collaborator Holly Blakey. “I thrive on improvisation,” Linder tells me. “I all the time say: you’ll be able to’t do something improper if you happen to’re improvising, you’ll be able to’t make a mistake.”
Efficiency preserved
Though there aren’t any additional performances at the moment scheduled, A type of glamour about me has not too long ago been acquired by the Mount Stuart Belief, with help from the Artwork Fund—the primary time one in all Linder’s performances has been bought. The parts embrace Ashish’s costume props, pictures by Hazel Gaskin and a specifically commissioned movie by the New York-born, Glasgow-based artist Margaret Salmon (who additionally has a solo present at Glasgow’s Hunterian Artwork Gallery till 19 October).
There’s additionally a powerful risk of future enactments, with Linder insisting: “This isn’t a one-night spell. It must be recast, recharged and reborn in new soil.” However for many who can’t wait, a extra enduring presence can nonetheless be skilled in Edinburgh. Just a few stray sequins now stay, however large photographic photos of lips, eyes, butterflies and even an owl have been planted in what the artist calls a “backyard of smiles”, beside the Edinburgh model of her main travelling retrospective, at Inverleith Home till 19 October. However be in your guard: the title is Hazard Got here Smiling.
• Linder: Hazard Got here Smiling, Inverleith Home, Edinburgh, till 19 October
