Drama in the Bushes: Linder’s Glamorous New Performance

As the audience members around me down their Rapscallion sodas, I feel myself being lulled into mythic time, captivated by a therianthropic, deerlike figure clad in a pink tinsel outfit. It moves lithely in the sun, gripping branches like antlers around its head. As if in a trance and drawn by faint, eerie music, we follow the sidling, magical creature through the sun-bleached gardens to a clearing among the oak trees.

This is the second of two performances by Linder titled A Kind of Glamour About Me (2025). The first took place at Mount Stuart, on the Isle of Bute, a neo-Gothic country house with a star-adorned vaulted ceiling, marble interiors and zodiac-themed stained glass. Today, we gather on the Oak Lawn of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Edinburgh, marking the opening of the Edinburgh Art Festival.

We fall still, as the figure steps into the cordoned pit, bracing itself as it encounters a golden, sequined salamander, its body covered in red orifices – perhaps gaping wounds, or even luscious lips. Seemingly for protection, the salamander crawls up a tree as a scaly silver reptile emerges from behind. These mystical creatures, whose colouration and defensive markings appear to complement the gardens’ flora and fauna, begin to move in coordination with a glitchy electronic live composition. It is a soothing orchestral tune punctuated by the sounds of war drums and gunshots. The mise-en-scène conjures a glamorous, spectacular dance, stirring associations with ancient, visceral ritual performances.

The drama is suffused with battle, alliance, provocation, seduction, betrayal and retribution, yet produces an air of melancholy. As the raw physicality and ever-present sexuality of nature become embodied in the creatures, their identities seem to shift – they appear queer and amorphous, with no fixed sense of self. They move fluidly between human, animal, plant, spectral and alien forms. Hunters become the hunted, power slips into subjugation and combat gives way to embrace, all while branches morph into antlers, rifles, stilts, shelters, prisons and pyres.

‘There is a kind of glamour about me,’ wrote the poet Walter Scott in his journal on 12 August 1826. The Scottish writer popularized the original sense of the word as referring to a spell or magical enchantment, often one that bewitches via visual illusions or false appearances; only later did it take on the meaning of desirability and allure. Linder was an early exponent and architect of the 1970s punk aesthetic, which has since evolved to incorporate folkloric and mythological forms. Her contemporary practice often evokes ritual, sorcery and a connection to medieval occult practices.

As the dust settles and the air clears, strewn paillettes glint across the grass, while branches are arranged into a pyre over the still body of the reptilian creature. The dance comes to a tragic close, its silence broken only by the gusting wind. I am mesmerized by Holly Blakey’s choreography, Ashish Gupta’s costumes and Maxwell Sterling’s music – each of which, at moments, catches me completely off guard. I approach an exhilarated Linder and her team, marvelling at the realization of the improvisational music and the performance’s call-and-response structure: the troupe of dancers and the music interact in real time rather than following a predetermined script.

I sense a shift from the bold, assertive expression of Linder’s physical works towards a quieter exploration of interpersonal and interspecies dynamics

The short route to Inverleith House, in the grounds of the Botanic Gardens, is amusingly dotted with large cut-outs of eyes and lips, along with reflective, colourful surfaces – like apparitions or possible portals glimpsed among the plants and trees – which guide the audience to the artist’s solo exhibition, ‘Danger Came Smiling’, a title borrowed from Linder’s 1982 album with her punk band, Ludus. This retrospective, spanning five decades of her practice, positions her within the lineage of female surrealist artists.

I wander through the galleries, pausing especially at the darkly sensual, acerbic and often humorous collages and photomontages composed of found images from old fashion magazines and pornographic publications. Here, female protagonists – often overlaid with an eclectic assemblage of imagery, ranging from vibrant flora to consumer goods and domestic appliances, which together obscure their identities – capture the mundanity of everyday domestic life while sharply critiquing the sexual objectification and commodification perpetuated by a consumer-driven, media-saturated, male-dominated culture.

I emerge, reflecting on the performance while envisioning its creatures replaced by the fierce female protagonists present throughout Linder’s collages. In A Kind of Glamour About Me, however, I sense a shift from the bold, assertive expression of Linder’s physical works towards a quieter exploration of interpersonal and interspecies dynamics – and a sense of unity or even liberation. Perhaps today, glamour came smiling.

Linder’s A Kind of Glamour About Me took place at the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh on August 7. Her survey exhibition, ‘Danger Came Smiling’, is at Inverleith House until 19 October. The performance was co-commissioned by the Edinburgh Art Festival and the Mount Stuart Trust, and produced in collaboration with choreographer Holly Blakey, composer Maxwell Sterling and fashion designer Ashish Gupta.

^{Main image: Linder at the Royal Botanic Gardens Edinburgh for EAF and Mount Stuart, 2025. Courtesy: the artist and Edinburgh Art Festival; photograph: Charlotte Cullen. Stylist: Rebecca Palmer. Make-up: Kala Williams.}