Author
James Darton
Contributing Editor
You don’t really get people like Linder Sterling anymore - those I Was There icons that James Murphy so memorably sung about on LCD Soundsystem’s debut single cultivated their mythologies in a time before hype blogs and social media and The Internet In General engulfed any semblance of a scene. Linder Sterling though, she was there: dig just a tiny way into the birth of punk, into the Sex Pistols and The Buzzcocks and (a little later) Morrissey and The Smiths. You’ll find Linder Sterling right there. She was the inspiration behind two of the most famous songs from the aforementioned: ‘Cemetery Gates’ by The Smiths and ‘What Do I Get’ by The Buzzcocks.
Of course, she wasn’t just ‘there.’ Far more than the vapid scenesters and groupies that women from that period are so often characterised as, Sterling was a radical, feminist, multi-disciplinary artist. She designed the famous cover of The Buzzcocks’ debut single, Orgasm Addict, and co-founded the influential fanzine Secret Public with punk journalist Jon Savage. She was also the singer of infamous post-punk group Ludus, with whom she pushed her confrontational politics to the fore - most memorably during a show at the Hacienda before which she placed bloodied tampons on every table and performed wearing a dress made from discarded chicken meat (take that Lady Gaga!) whilst her friends handed out raw meat wrapped in pornography.
![1 Floom Magazine Linder Sterling Matrikaz 1](https://floom.imgix.net/products/1_floom_magazine_linder_sterling_matrikaz_1.jpg?auto=format&crop=focalpoint&fit=crop&fm=pjpg&fp-x=0.5&fp-y=0.5&ixlib=php-1.1.0&q=65&w=1440&s=fc80b5be2009750ca11626baedd0d8fe 1440w, https://floom.imgix.net/products/1_floom_magazine_linder_sterling_matrikaz_1.jpg?auto=format&crop=focalpoint&fit=crop&fm=pjpg&fp-x=0.5&fp-y=0.5&ixlib=php-1.1.0&q=65&w=1000&s=d8945cfaafe62948311f861728faf22d 1000w, https://floom.imgix.net/products/1_floom_magazine_linder_sterling_matrikaz_1.jpg?auto=format&crop=focalpoint&fit=crop&fm=pjpg&fp-x=0.5&fp-y=0.5&ixlib=php-1.1.0&q=65&w=600&s=d02f54b739b857f1856bc21fa813c43c 600w, https://floom.imgix.net/products/1_floom_magazine_linder_sterling_matrikaz_1.jpg?auto=format&crop=focalpoint&fit=crop&fm=pjpg&fp-x=0.5&fp-y=0.5&ixlib=php-1.1.0&q=65&w=400&s=355f08fd3d836ef81216d6bdc3abfaca 400w)
![1 Floom Magazine Linder Sterling Bella Welsh 1](https://floom.imgix.net/products/1_floom_magazine_linder_sterling_bella_welsh_1.jpg?auto=format&crop=focalpoint&fit=crop&fm=pjpg&fp-x=0.5&fp-y=0.5&ixlib=php-1.1.0&q=65&w=1440&s=d5b5a56b4904c98a8137dc17d2e4c1f4 1440w, https://floom.imgix.net/products/1_floom_magazine_linder_sterling_bella_welsh_1.jpg?auto=format&crop=focalpoint&fit=crop&fm=pjpg&fp-x=0.5&fp-y=0.5&ixlib=php-1.1.0&q=65&w=1000&s=8452662617baa27e2ee49fcbfb65aa5f 1000w, https://floom.imgix.net/products/1_floom_magazine_linder_sterling_bella_welsh_1.jpg?auto=format&crop=focalpoint&fit=crop&fm=pjpg&fp-x=0.5&fp-y=0.5&ixlib=php-1.1.0&q=65&w=600&s=b7a041027ad4d043c3aaef3c2115e7d4 600w, https://floom.imgix.net/products/1_floom_magazine_linder_sterling_bella_welsh_1.jpg?auto=format&crop=focalpoint&fit=crop&fm=pjpg&fp-x=0.5&fp-y=0.5&ixlib=php-1.1.0&q=65&w=400&s=bb4c43cfd7e1f08e6a82d4803b3b96db 400w)
Inevitably, her art has become increasingly accepted for the boundary-pushing work that it is, and recent years have seen her exhibiting at prestigious galleries around the world. It is a far cry from her dissident beginnings, when Rank Xerox would refuse to photocopy her ‘obscene’ images.
The fierce messages at the heart of her output have been unwavering however, and it was perhaps equally inevitable that some of her most striking pieces have come to utilise flower imagery, that bastion metaphor for womanhood and fertility. To be clear though, the flower works were never a sign of Linder pandering to more comforting , easy to digest aesthetic pleasures - one series of collages subverts the veneer of glamour magazines by cutting up images of bestiality and offsetting them with delicate blooms and butterflies.
In recent years, Linder has made the English Rose - that most prettified and commodified of flowers - her muse. They gleam almost garishly, thrusting out from between the legs of the dead-eyed centrefold, the blank adonis. As the LA Review Of Books put it, “what seems to be a flower is an object of pure cultural fantasy, something that would not exist without a vast history of human cultivation, just as our own bodies reflect all the fantasies and anxieties about sex that our culture has developed.”
![1 Floom Magazine Linder Sterling International Markets And Contexts 1](https://floom.imgix.net/products/1_floom_magazine_linder_sterling_international_markets_and_contexts_1.jpg?auto=format&crop=focalpoint&fit=crop&fm=pjpg&fp-x=0.5&fp-y=0.5&ixlib=php-1.1.0&q=65&w=1440&s=263d5dcd0d4dff3e2c4a760f1cb43230 1440w, https://floom.imgix.net/products/1_floom_magazine_linder_sterling_international_markets_and_contexts_1.jpg?auto=format&crop=focalpoint&fit=crop&fm=pjpg&fp-x=0.5&fp-y=0.5&ixlib=php-1.1.0&q=65&w=1000&s=1bfb667bab8ab1ce1a405eaddb2568a7 1000w, https://floom.imgix.net/products/1_floom_magazine_linder_sterling_international_markets_and_contexts_1.jpg?auto=format&crop=focalpoint&fit=crop&fm=pjpg&fp-x=0.5&fp-y=0.5&ixlib=php-1.1.0&q=65&w=600&s=86e24bf89122d7d32047f46c83b1b0bb 600w, https://floom.imgix.net/products/1_floom_magazine_linder_sterling_international_markets_and_contexts_1.jpg?auto=format&crop=focalpoint&fit=crop&fm=pjpg&fp-x=0.5&fp-y=0.5&ixlib=php-1.1.0&q=65&w=400&s=3a0c1e3ede5715d3b0524a47ded00dfa 400w)
![1 Floom Magazine Linder Sterling Dazed 1](https://floom.imgix.net/products/1_floom_magazine_linder_sterling_dazed_1.jpg?auto=format&crop=focalpoint&fit=crop&fm=pjpg&fp-x=0.5&fp-y=0.5&ixlib=php-1.1.0&q=65&w=1440&s=f4c88d024935f1a4def7b9899baa5d86 1440w, https://floom.imgix.net/products/1_floom_magazine_linder_sterling_dazed_1.jpg?auto=format&crop=focalpoint&fit=crop&fm=pjpg&fp-x=0.5&fp-y=0.5&ixlib=php-1.1.0&q=65&w=1000&s=eb7887eb4c7b9b42a330ce6113063a90 1000w, https://floom.imgix.net/products/1_floom_magazine_linder_sterling_dazed_1.jpg?auto=format&crop=focalpoint&fit=crop&fm=pjpg&fp-x=0.5&fp-y=0.5&ixlib=php-1.1.0&q=65&w=600&s=137c4ea4f40d1561d98a1ea4614b105d 600w, https://floom.imgix.net/products/1_floom_magazine_linder_sterling_dazed_1.jpg?auto=format&crop=focalpoint&fit=crop&fm=pjpg&fp-x=0.5&fp-y=0.5&ixlib=php-1.1.0&q=65&w=400&s=8543bc565dacfadb06d700c87e3a58e6 400w)
Here are a selection of our favourite Linder Sterling pieces to feature floral iconography. At Floom we are often swept away by the immediate aesthetic pleasures of the flowers we find - however the reasons we truly love them are for the vast complexities that go beyond what you might initially grasp at from the temporality of a bouquet: the unknowable wonder of nature; the symbolism and storytelling that stretches back over endless years and cultures of human history. The ability to shock, delight and intrigue all at once - an encapsulation also of Sterling’s relentless body of work.
![1 Floom Magazine Linder Sterling Luster Magazine 1](https://floom.imgix.net/products/1_floom_magazine_linder_sterling_luster_magazine_1.jpg?auto=format&crop=focalpoint&fit=crop&fm=pjpg&fp-x=0.5&fp-y=0.5&ixlib=php-1.1.0&q=65&w=1440&s=bcb5aeb20d7935809e589ec4e89534e8 1440w, https://floom.imgix.net/products/1_floom_magazine_linder_sterling_luster_magazine_1.jpg?auto=format&crop=focalpoint&fit=crop&fm=pjpg&fp-x=0.5&fp-y=0.5&ixlib=php-1.1.0&q=65&w=1000&s=7f144715f52e24adaab340a1e0ba9b3f 1000w, https://floom.imgix.net/products/1_floom_magazine_linder_sterling_luster_magazine_1.jpg?auto=format&crop=focalpoint&fit=crop&fm=pjpg&fp-x=0.5&fp-y=0.5&ixlib=php-1.1.0&q=65&w=600&s=49b5994a0955dc8b0529759f2e4830d2 600w, https://floom.imgix.net/products/1_floom_magazine_linder_sterling_luster_magazine_1.jpg?auto=format&crop=focalpoint&fit=crop&fm=pjpg&fp-x=0.5&fp-y=0.5&ixlib=php-1.1.0&q=65&w=400&s=c4f9fa4bd0c15e201e91c4fc52d064a4 400w)
Image Credits:
Matrikaz
Bella Walsh
Markets and Contexts
Dazed
Luster Magazine