Linder’s artistic roots in Manchester’s punk scene have rightly been lionised along with her taboo-busting photomontages from that era. As vital and totemic as her early feminist subversions of pornography and women’s magazines remain, this Edinburgh iteration of her 50-year retrospective (first presented at London’s Hayward Gallery) makes clear there has been a lot more going on since.

Outside at the Royal Botanic Garden, Linder gets back to nature with cut-out shapes peeking from the trees or standing proud in the pond. Inside Inverleith House, each section playfully defines Linder’s cut-and-paste aesthetic. This is as much the case with the elaborately patterned rug inspired by surrealist artist Ithell Colquhoun (made for 2015 dance work ‘Children Of The Mantic Stain’) as it is for her 1977 photographs of Manchester drag artists.

More recent works such as ‘The Liverpool Sphinx’ (2025) and ‘The Pool Of Life’ (2021) are mature examples of Linder’s oeuvre, supreme in confidence and execution. Elsewhere, flowers bring colour to monochrome classical works. Her era-defining image of a naked woman with an iron for a head, from the cover of Buzzcocks’ ‘Orgasm Addict’ single, had to be here. As too do the DIY gig posters, The Secret Public zine created with writer Jon Savage, and album art for post-punk fabulists Magazine as well as Linder’s own band Ludus. As a whole, Danger Came Smiling might be viewed as one giant collage that gives new definition to the idea of a body of work. 
Linder: Danger Came Smiling, Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh, until Sunday 19 October; main picture: Sally Jubb.