Linder (B. 1954)

‘…central to my own work has always been the fact that women have more than one pair of lips.’ (Linder, quoted in ‘Linder, interviewed by Morrissey’, Interview Magazine, accessed at https://www.interviewmagazine.com/art/linder/#page5)

Imposing a giant pink rose on the naked female form, Star Series: No.1 is a prime example of how British artist Linder uses collage to create images that are at once provocative and humorous. One of a series that was exhibited at MoMA PS1 in 2007, the work is a typical example of the carefully executed photomontages that have formed the basis of Linder’s work since the 1970s. Overlaying domestic objects, lush flowers, lipsticks, wide eyes, and plump lips on images from male consumer magazines, Linder’s work challenges conventional notions of gender, power and consumer culture.

Intimately involved with the punk movement, Linder’s implicitly anti-establishment work carries its rebellious spirit into the present day. In an interview with Morrissey, a great friend and collaborator from the 1970s Manchester scene, she said: ‘I have always worked with found material—a photograph, a magazine, a film still, myself. I commence the creative act and I’m quite happily guilty of theft. The trick that follows is to find the gesture that returns newness to the familiar; my familiars are the inanimate objects I work with. I restore the implicit to the explicit’ (Linder, quoted in ‘Linder, interviewed by Morrissey’, Interview Magazine, accessed at https://www.interviewmagazine.com/art/linder/#page5).