Visual/Performance artist and musician, Linder Sterling (born Linda Mulvey) is not only a brilliant artist, but she is also a stunningly beautiful, creative, unique and progressive dresser. As an artist, she doesn't conform to trends expected of women during the late 70s/early 80s. She dresses for comfort and herself. She understands the female form, her form, and dresses on her own terms and rules.
As one of the most important figures in the Manchester post-punk scene, Sterling's montages of home appliances and porno mag clippings turned first wave punk rockers (still a very masculine, very sexist world at the time) on its ass, making bold statements of how women and their form become commodities (she is especially famous for the Buzzcock's 7" cover of Orgasm Addict shown below).
She showed hard-as-nails Manchester punks that she was tougher and lewder and more shocking than anyone in the scene. She donned a dress made of raw meats while her band Ludus performed at the Hacienda (in protest for vegetarianism) and placed tampons soaked with red paint on every table of a rough club where she would get shit for being a female performer (the tampons disgusted and scared all the guys in the club).
One of my favorites
Audrey Mascina and Jerome Sans from Liquid Architecture own two pieces from Linder’s 1977 “Pretty Girl Series.” They were featured in one of the latest Selby photo-logs.
Untitled, 1977 Magazine and newspaper collage on paper; 8 x 8 1/2 inches
A flyer for the Buzzcocks (Howard was, at one time, her boyfriend)
The famous Buzzcocks image
The Pickpocket cover
Riding the Rag cover
When she wasn't shocking people with dresses of disgusting meat, she wore her mussed, eyebrows heavy and raised, simple black sweaters, lace dresses and sliced asymmetrical skirts. Her uniform was very punk, but completely uncliche and chic.
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