Linder: The House of Fame review – too punk for a Turner?

Nottingham Contemporary
A gatherer of dark treasures, Linder Sterling’s retrospective contains wondrous, surreal, menacing dreams

Linder Sterling was still a student at Manchester Polytechnic in 1977 when she made a set of erotic masks out of cut-up lingerie for her friend Howard Devoto, of local punk band the Buzzcocks. Now they’re in a case in an art gallery, and Linder herself is a famous artist. Yet the way she has staged her retrospective at Nottingham Contemporary proves that punk’s not dead – not in her imagination anyway.

Linder doesn’t want to be an art star. Imagine that line set to one-note guitar and thudding drums. She doesn’t wanna be a cultural totem. Instead of an exhibition about herself, she has staged her retrospective as a survey of her influences and enthusiasms, in which she shares the stage with heroes, ghosts and – it sometimes seems – everyone she has ever admired.

Related: 'Do you have any ectoplasm? Is it vaginal?' The return of punk artist Linder

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