Born Linda Mulvey in 1954 in Liverpool, Linder grew up in Wigan. In 1973 she enrolled at Manchester Polytechnic and took a degree in graphic design. “I felt it held the most promise for me aesthetically, sartorially and politically,” she says In 1976 she went to a Sex Pistols, Buzzcocks and Slaughter and the Dogs gig and her life “changed forever”. She started to use a scalpel as a creative instrument—“I wanted to make stab incisions into the host culture around me.” She also Germanised her name to Linder. “Musically, sartorially and graphically we started to cut things up.” Linder’s 1977 collage was used for the cover of the Buzzcocks’ first seven-inch single, Orgasm Addict. She founded post-punk band Ludus in 1978, performing at the Hacienda in Manchester in 1982. Solo exhibitions of Linder’s work have taken place in New York in 2007, London in 2010 and Paris in 2013. For her solo shows at Hepworth Wakefield and Tate St Ives, also in 2013, Linder collaborated with Kenneth Tindall of Northern Ballet for a performance piece, The Ultimate Form. She was artist in residence at Chatsworth House in 2018. Also last year she opened a solo show The House of Fame at Nottingham Contemporary, as well as a flag and a film for the Glasgow Women’s Library and a billboard-sized work for London Underground, all entitled Bower of Bliss. Linder was awarded a Paul Hamlyn Award in 2017.
