Sorcha Dallas

Born Linda Mulvey in 1954, the artist Linder Sterling played an important part during the 1970s punk scene in Manchester. Among other things, one of her photomontages was used for the cover of the Buzzcocks’ debut single “Orgasm Addict”. This image of a well-muscled female torso, her face covered by a domestic iron and her nipples replaced by red lipstick lips, was recently purchased by the Tate. Sterling’s work – often using images of naked women, their faces obscured by domestic appliances – has continued to embrace feminist politics. In the Pretty Girl photomontage series from 1977 she used images from porn magazines. During the 1980s, she made a montage from images of herself, entitled Myself as a Found Object, in which she covered her face with plastic or placed a fragment of another face on top of her own. Sterling has never described herself as a feminist but her images scream in protest at the repression of women. They also play with notions of identity, ideas developed by artists such as Cindy Sherman. Sterling’s performance with her band Ludus at Manchester’s Hacienda in 1982 – during which she wore a dress made from meat over a large strap-on dildo – became legendary; bloodied Tampax were hung from the banisters. “This was my retort to the Hacienda’s casual and interminable showing of porn films. I finished the last song to absolute silence from the audience,” said Sterling. Linder and Morrissey formed a friendship during the 1970s that lasted well over two decades. During the 1990s she photographed him as he sang his way through Manchester, El Paso, Los Angeles and Phoenix. He describes her thus: “In my view, Linder’s life is a docudrama, potent and therefore lethal. She is aware of the inevitable punishment for those who seek to kick against the enforced limitations of their lives and she is aware of the price you pay for exposing restraints.”