Let’s stick together

No artist caught the spirit of punk like Linder. As a London show opens, she discusses the trauma that shapes her startling collages

Alex Needham

In 1977, the punk band Buzzcocks released a single called Orgasm Addict, with a record sleeve as jolting as the song’s title. It depicted a lean and muscular, oiled-up naked woman with an iron for a head and smiling, lipsticked mouths for nipples. The collage was scary, sexy and shocking – especially since it was mass produced, seen in record shops and on the streets, rather than confined to a gallery. “Buzzcocks had just signed to United Artists, so there was quite a large publicity budget,” Linder Sterling, the creator of the collage, remembers. “So that poster was in cities everywhere. It was unmissable. There was no social media, so the effect was hard to track, but years later people say to me ‘I saw that poster in Glasgow, or…

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Guardian Weekly (Digital) - 1 Issue, 21 February 2025

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