Danger Came Smiling

Danger Came Smiling; Linder at the Hayward Gallery.

The Hayward Gallery is playing host to the prickly, challenging and startling art of Linder Sterling.

The exhibition’s giallo-like title leads you through the doorway filled with a huge head shot of Linder in a black lace dress, string of pearls and hard, flyaway eye makeup, her lower face wrapped in polythene. Her robophobic stare lets you know you are in for some rough handling.

To those who recall the heady, dangerous early days of punk, Linder is remembered as the artist behind the cover of Buzzcocks’ ‘Orgasm Addict’ single, a sexualised image of a woman’s body excised from a porn magazine (?) with lipsticked, sugar smiles where her nipples would be and an electric iron for a head. This jarring combination would be something Linder would practice to perfection in her art, her scalpel ensuring a sharp line from the naked bodies superimposed on scenes of dreamlike domestic life.  ‘I select imagery with my scalpel and I make my mark’.

An eclectic selection of gig flyers feature now legendary bands such as Joy Division, Magazine, Buzzcocks and Linder’s own band, Ludus, ranging from the ‘type and scrawl’ style of early punk to the severe, spare line Bauhaus-influenced style of the early 80’s. 

A subversive magazine prepared by Linder titled ‘Pretty Girls’ features many shots of a model, nude and reposing on mid-century furniture, with Linder’s trademark household appliances replacing the model’s head and limbs in a comment on the objectification of women found in the ‘real’ counterparts to this publication. There is humour here too, tempting the viewer to think of some mash up of ‘Spick and Span’ magazines and the prizes on the conveyor belt of ‘The Generation Game’. A naked female torso in a kitchen, her head a food mixer, stares lasciviously at a bottle full of juicy frankfurters. In one particularly arresting shot, the model’s head is replaced by a snapshot camera; literally, ‘I Am A Camera’.

Flowers, incorporated into Linder’s pictures at an early stage, replace fetishized household appliances as covers – or deeper revelations? – of otherwise naked bodies, a plant’s sexual organs replacing a human’s. A macho male stares out of his photograph, the ironic choice of an orchid covering his genitals. Showy, colourful male birds make their appearances in the corners of pictures, males objectified instead of females.



Later works give greater prominence to more of the transgressive imagery in Linder’s early interest in the drag scene and playful eroticism.

Enter at your own risk, but do enter.

Danger Came Smiling is at the Hayward Gallery until 5^th May.

Scenester

16/2/25