A kind of glamour about me
Linder Sterling, also known as Linder, 2025
This collaborative performance, incorporating choreography, costumes, soundtrack and stage design, was newly devised by multidisciplinary feminist artist Linder, first known for her punk-infused photomontages. Co-commissioned by Mount Stuart Trust and the Edinburgh Art Festival, the work was performed at both locations in summer 2025. As well as supporting the performance, Art Fund has helped Mount Stuart to acquire materials relating to it. Morven Gregor, curator of contemporary at Mount Stuart, a 19th-century manor house and gardens, explains more about the work.
One of Linder’s instructions to the performers in A kind of glamour about me was to ‘always delight me, always surprise me’. This and the work’s title suggest routes to understanding her performance. First presented in the three-tiered Marble Hall of Mount Stuart, with dancers dazzling in sequined and tinsel costumes, it initially seems to fulfil current notions of glamour: beauty, attraction, excitement. However, as with Linder’s photomontages, it demands more detailed examination.
Linder cites [Scottish novelist and poet] Walter Scott (1771-1832) as the source, referencing both his correspondence and creative work. Scott complains of having ‘a kind of glamour about me’, making him unable to correct dates and details in proofs, while in his ballad-style poem The Lay of the Last Minstrel (1805), the rhyming narrative suggests a meaning that Scott clarifies in a footnote: glamour means magical delusion.
Magical delusion resonates with Mount Stuart: its fantastical neo-Gothic design realised in pink sandstone with romantic turrets, chimneys and external balconies inserted between its surviving Georgian wings; the zodiac stained-glass and starscape ceiling; depictions of goddesses and muses providing decorative details throughout. We knew that inviting Linder into this incredible environment would provide a rich terrain in which to grow concepts and references for the performance.
Linder precisely defines photomontage and its lineage of protest and social commentary. Where montage can collide with collage is as a methodology for creating live work. For A kind of glamour about me, Linder worked with Maxwell Sterling (composer and musician), Ashish Gupta (costume designer, related image shown left), choreographer Holly Blakey and dancers Willow Fenner, Sari Mizoe, Luigi Nardone and Sophie Ormiston. The parallel with collage is bringing different elements together in an open and egalitarian way to discover which juxtapositions spark.
Linder’s projects develop and build from her lifetime of experience and practice, allowing, as in this case, for a short, intense period with collaborators to devise the performance. During rehearsals she reflected, ‘The spirit of improvisation thrills me, will always thrill me, to know this is happening in real time.’ And this is where the ancient magic of performance seeps in: the idea of performers focusing on the moment, allowing themselves to become other, transformed, shamanistic shapeshifters. It is a brave act, to be on stage without dictated steps or scored notes. Each iteration of this performance is designed to be unique: costumes, performers, instruments and props may remain the same – but this is work that is created afresh in real time for every audience.
This is risky territory. In rehearsal we discuss chance and unexpected events – a costume damaged, a prop broken. Linder reminds the performers that this is a lawless space. Since there are no rules, none can be broken; since there is no right way, nothing can go wrong. Rather, these are simply events to be embraced. The potential chaos of this free space is echoed in the suite of new photomontage works Linder created for her related exhibition at Mount Stuart [15 June to 31 August 2025] using photographs of Alice in Wonderland-inspired tableaux from the Bute family archive – another exploration of alternative realities where words mean what characters want them to mean and anything could happen.
Through Art Fund’s generous acquisition grant, Mount Stuart Trust has not only been able to co-commission these unique performances but is also setting about the task of collecting a range of documentation around the performance. Possibly the most notable element of this will be an artist’s film by Margaret Salmon, which responds to the live work, adding longevity to the project. We envisage not only future screenings, but the film becoming the central element of the collected capsule of A kind of glamour about me, which Mount Stuart Trust will promote to school students and academics for further study.
More information
Title of artwork, date
A kind of glamour about me, 2025
Date supported
2025
Medium and material
Commissioned performance-related documentation, including a film by artist Margaret Salmon, costumes, bespoke wooden stilts, still images, artist’s project Common Book (preparatory sketches and details)
Dimensions
Various materials and dimensions
Grant
22,500
Total cost
75,510
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