LINDER

BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art presents a photographic collage exhibition by British artist and active figure in the punk and post-punk movement, Linder. The exhibition contains work from her Pretty Girl No. 1 series and will be shown in the Cube Space at BALTIC from Monday 3 September to Sunday 14 October 2007.

Since the late 1970’s Linder has worked with collages, photomontage, music, film and performance. She unites fantastical and political elements in her collages, and has continued to adapt them to her own specific concerns over the course of her thirty year career. Her first impact on the public consciousness was through her early punk collages seen in the self published fanzine The Secret Public and on the sleeve for the Buzzcocks debut single, Orgasm Addict. These confrontational images, bringing together imagery of pornography and kitchen appliances, were genuinely progressive at a time when pornography was not regarded as ubiquitous.

Within Pretty Girls No. 1 the juxtaposition and overlaying of nude figures with household domestic appliances such as TVs, vacuum cleaners and cookers, create striking and graphic compositions. These photomontages use backdrops taken from 1970’s furnishing catalogues; pristine and neutral environments which contrast awkwardly with the nude hybrid creatures that inhabit them. This technique of combining both the sexuality of women and also their domesticity can be seen as an attack on conventional female roles and representation. By using objects generally associated with domesticity it highlights and challenges the notions of power, femininity and consumer culture.

Linder Biography Linder, full name Linda Sterling, was born in Liverpool in 1954. She has had numerous solo exhibitions of her work, including The Lives of Women Dreaming at the British Council, Prague (2004); and The Return of Linderland at Cornerhouse, Manchester (2000). Her work has been featured in group shows at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; Kunstverein Munich; and, most recently, in the exhibition The Secret Public at the Institute of Contemporary Arts, London. She has performed at the 2006 Tate Triennial and at the Barbican, both in London; and at Le Magasin, Grenoble. Earlier this year Pretty Girls Series was presented at the PS1 Gallery, New York and in the autumn her work will be shown at Stuart Shave/Modern Art. She lives and works in Heysham, United Kingdom.

LINDER
Linder Sterling
Pretty Girl. No.1