Linderism at Kettle’s Yard, Cambridge

Natalie Bradbury

Natalie Bradbury reviews ‘Linderism’ – the iconic artist Linder’s first UK survey exhibition, which is on display at Kettle’s Yard in Cambridge until 11 October 2020. As well as a retrospective, the show also features a number of new commissions; artist interventions within the Kettle’s Yard House, Research Space, staircases and café; and ‘Linderism at Home’ – an online extension presented on the Kettle’s Yard website.

Whilst the radical artist and musician Linder is perhaps best-known for her feminist, punk-style cut-up photomontages, which collage and critique imagery from popular culture, the retrospective ‘Linderism’ offers a much more multi-faceted picture of her career, bringing together works on paper with sculpture, photography and video.

Hung roughly chronologically by era across the Kettle’s Yard exhibition spaces, ‘Linderism’ shows how Linder’s work – which spans a period of five decades – continues to evolve in style, scale and complexity. The show begins in the 1970s with early photomontages, alongside record covers, zines and gig posters for Manchester bands such as Buzzcocks and Magazine. It ends with more recent works, including documentation of performances developed with Northern Ballet, and a recreation of a huge mural commissioned by Art on the Underground for Southwark Station (Bower of Bliss, 2018/2020). 

One of the first works we see upon entering is Haçienda Redux (1982/2020), which comprises a short, sassy extract of Linder performing with her post-punk group Ludus at the Hacienda nightclub in Manchester in 1982. Wearing her infamous ‘meat dress’ (a dress made of raw meat), a dildo flaps from her crotch in riposte to the notorious masculinity of the Manchester music scene. There’s a liveness to the footage – one iconic moment is captured in perpetuity – but also a strangeness and distance. Overlaid with a new, mournful, classical soundtrack by Linder’s son, Maxwell Sterling, played on a double bass, our senses warp: what we see is dissonant with what we’re hearing. Slowed down, Linder is caught in an endless and unresolvable loop, like a story in which we never get to find out what happens next. This image of her, abrasive and defiant, sears itself onto my brain, lingering in my mind as I move through the space. 

Whatever the format, a preoccupation with the visibility of women – and the ways in which we see them – is a recurring theme throughout. Linder herself is a huge presence in the exhibition. Though much of her work borrows anonymous stock images from magazines, her photographic self-portraits catch my eye, in particular the pairing You search but do not see and Hiding but still not knowing (both 1981-2010). The veil usually obscures a woman’s face; here it is replaced with see-through plastic wrap, putting her on show and making her more visible than ever.

Whilst Linder’s personality comes through powerfully, one of the most interesting aspects of the exhibition is her drive to reanimate a woman who was central to the story of Kettle’s Yard but who remains only in passing reference: Helen Ede. 

Kettle’s Yard is centred around a series of domestic spaces which were conceived of as both a home and a gallery. Developed in 1957 from four run-down cottages, the collector and curator Jim Ede devised a domestic setting for his collection of contemporary artworks, which he carefully arranged in dialogue with the furniture, the space and the light, as well as found objects, plants and floral displays. The result is an unusually intimate environment for viewing art, in which we get a rare glimpse into what it’s like to live close-up with and get to know paintings, drawings and sculptures by leading British and international artists, normally seen only in the formal white cube setting of a gallery. Even though the Edes left the house more than forty years ago, something of its ethos – intended as a space for socialising, conviviality and the forging of relationships – remains. Its library area and bookshelves encourage us to browse and find out more, and a centrally placed piano conjures images of the house filled with people, discussion and music.

Whereas Jim’s name is synonymous with Kettle’s Yard, which he left to Cambridge University as a legacy, that of his wife Helen, an art teacher, is almost missing from the story (reading extracts from Jim’s diaries, written during their time living in Tangier, Morocco, in the 1930s and 1940s, you get little sense of Helen’s role in the relationship beyond the provision of breakfast and other meals – and occasionally playing the piano).

Linder, in her own small way, has attempted to assert this missing presence, acknowledging Helen as one of many women whose stories have been forgotten in the telling of art history. This begins on the Kettle’s Yard website, where Linder has changed every occurrence of Jim’s name in the discussion of Kettle’s Yard history to Helen’s. It continues through small interventions around the house which disrupt Jim’s carefully curated arrangements of the space. The air is filled with subtle wafts of potpourri (recreated from a recipe by Jim). Heady with incense and spices, it mingles with new floral arrangements containing English roses (a reference to those often found throughout Linder’s work). New sculptures hide among the Edes’ artefacts, too. Sitting amid a rack of plants, lit by sunlight pouring through a window behind it, artificial hair spills out from a fluid glass shape in joyful abandon, almost as if summoning the spirit of Helen and making a bid for freedom (Hel Liberada, 2020).

Helen’s own bedroom was a refuge from the social functions of the house – the one space where guests were not entertained, and which Ede did not himself curate. It has temporarily become a small gallery for a series of Linder’s photomontages, in which domestic objects such as sofas and cutlery invade scenes of women at work and leisure. In one, Celestial Connection (2015), a woman attempts to relax, floating atop a lilo, but she’s weighed down by a set of oversized cutlery. Absurd juxtapositions such as these prompt us think about the way we relate to others, and the roles we find ourselves playing according to internal and external narratives of who we should be and our place in society.

Linder’s work bridges mass culture and high art: she roves across the pages of porn mags, fashion magazines, ballet books and classical mythology alike in search of source material and inspiration. Jim, too, was interested in the everyday and in breaking down distinctions between high and low culture. In the Edes’ home, paintings, drawings and sculptures sit next to pebbles and other found objects. For all this apparent equity of objects, everything is considered and in its place: though seemingly random, nothing is left to chance.

It takes a sound installation by Maxwell Sterling to break through this polite scene of middle-class tastefulness, which has been preserved as a museum since the Edes left in the 1970s. In The One Who Benefits in Every Way (2020), Linder is among several women reciting a litany of variants on words for female genitals. This sound piece is piped into a hatch which connected Jim and Helen’s individual bedrooms, and through which they once communicated via paper notes (a concept that seems quaintly, sweetly archaic today). As I stand in this impeccable home, where the utmost concern is shown for appearances and the way things look, I can only wonder: What Helen would think?

Linderism is on display at Kettle’s Yard in Cambridge until Sunday 11 October 2020 and is open by prior booking Wednesday-Sunday. The exhibition is organised in association with the Hatton Gallery, Newcastle University.

Explore Linderism at Home, an online extension of the exhibition, on the Kettle’s Yard website.