Ten seconds into Linder’s new performance creation and a baby starts crying. It’s Saturday afternoon in Mount Stuart House, a gothic country pile on the Isle Of Bute, and the storm outside has already provided a dramatic backdrop to A kind of glamour about me; its accompanying exhibition has Linder drawing from Victorian photographs of a family dressing up for some kind of Alice In Wonderland cosplay. The title comes from Walter Scott, who wrote ‘there is a kind of glamour about me, which sometimes makes me read dates, etc, in the proof-sheets, not as they actually do stand, but as they ought to stand.’ Such notions chime with Linder’s own mystical fantasias.

For a moment at the start of the performance, you wonder whether the infant wail is being conjured up by composer Maxwell Sterling on his electric cello at the side of the stage. Either way, it seems to fit with the maelstrom that follows, as a quartet of extravagantly clad dancers slowly emerge into the playing area. ‘It sounded like the best sample ever,’ says Linder a few days later of the accidental intervention. ‘I was really disappointed when they took the baby away and calmed it down. They were probably quite disturbed by the volume, but having that little human cry (because of the world, because of whatever) was very, very touching. I saw the dad afterwards and he said he was really worried it was going to interfere with everything, but I told him it was really beautiful to hear that little baby crying out.’

The dancers are decked out in bespoke outfits by international fashion designer Ashish Gupta, whose maximalist creations are worn by the likes of Taylor Swift, Miley Cyrus and Debbie Harry. As imagined by Linder with choreographer Holly Blakey, the dancers are personified as fantastical characters: Midnight Sky, The Tree, Crescent Moon and Danger. The latter comes from Danger Came Smiling, the title of Linder’s retrospective show (named after a 1982 album by Linder’s old band, Ludus). The show takes place at Inverleith House in Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh following a run at London’s Hayward Gallery. A second iteration of A kind of glamour about me will take place on the Botanic Garden’s oak lawn.

‘I think we’ll take our cue from the gardens, and from herbology, from plant magic, from plant sex lives, which I’m now quite an expert on,’ deadpans Linder. ‘I think the botanists at the garden are really excited to have an artist coming in who works a lot with flower and plant imagery, and we have really amazing discussions about incest and plants, plant reproduction and plant folklore. Although the performance will be an improvisation, inevitably we will bring gestures from Mount Stuart with us, because it’s like a bookend. Whatever we do, it’s going to look very, very different from dancing amidst marble; although, I suppose, with the huge marble pillars and the huge oak trees, you could say there is a sort of verticality to both landscapes.’

An improvisatory physical energy pervades throughout the Mount Stuart performance that recalls some of Linder’s earlier works. These include The Working Class Goes To Paradise (2000/2006), in which Linder channelled Clint Eastwood and Shaker rituals as three bands played at the same time; The Darktown Cakewalk: Celebrated From The House Of Fame (2010), the 13-hour epic that took place at The Arches in Glasgow; and Children Of The Mantic Stain (2016), inspired by surrealist Ithell Colquhoun and performed by members of Northern Ballet at Dovecot in Edinburgh.

The tapestry from Children Of The Mantic Stain is on show as part of Danger Came Smiling, which rewinds all the way back to Linder’s punk past by way of photomontages that fused imagery from pornographic magazines subverted with images of domestic appliances. Long-time Linder watchers will know her cover image for Buzzcocks’ 1977 single ‘Orgasm Addict’, and some of the cut-out shapes used on the cover of Magazine’s debut album Real Life from 1978.

An unused prototype for the sleeve of Magazine’s first single, ‘Shot By Both Sides’, is also on show. There are also record-cover images from Ludus, whose combination of cocktail-jazz guitar stylings and blood-and-lipstick lyrics was both seductive and subversive. With half a century’s worth of work seen together, the throwaway DIY urgency of punk now forms a historical archive of a still vital artist whose well-deserved ascendency has seen her become a kind of grand dame of post-punk aesthetics and an art-star inspiration to younger generations. Danger Came Smiling arrives at a time when major women artists of Linder’s generation and earlier, who came from the countercultural avant-garde, are receiving major attention.

This follows London retrospectives of Carolee Schneemann and writer Kathy Acker, while memoirs by Throbbing Gristle co-founder Cosey Fanni Tutti and others have been published to acclaim. Work by Linder and Tutti appeared as part of Women In Revolt!, the large-scale group show of late 20th-century grassroots feminist art that toured to Edinburgh in 2024. ‘It took a long time, didn’t it?’ Linder says. ‘Women In Revolt! opened the doors for a lot of women who have never exhibited their work. I’m lucky in that I’ve been predominantly on the map, but so many women that were shown were completely inaudible and completely invisible. So for them, especially, I think that the exhibition was a game-changer. Thank goodness.’

While Linder’s associations with Manchester’s punk scene are plentiful in Danger Came Smiling, more recent images look to her Liverpool roots. While ‘The Liverpool Sphinx’ is a witty self-portrait of sorts, ‘The Pool Of Life’ draws from the famous essay of the same name by psychoanalyst Carl Jung following a dream about a city he never visited. While this became a major influence on Liverpool’s 1970s avant-garde, Linder would rather talk about football and the Scouse divas who inspired the work. ‘I’ve always been a loyal Liverpool football fan, but watching those matches, especially last season when they’ve done so well, you see the glamour of the sport and the glamour of Liverpool Football Club, and the fans, especially. There was a great flag I saw held up, and the slogan was “Imagine Being Us”. I just thought that was such a beautiful sentiment.’

When Linder was asked to give what was described as a masterclass to London teenagers, she took this sentiment with her. ‘I said “I’ll do it, but I don’t want to call it anything to do with master or anything to do with class.” So I used Imagine Being Us, so that we artists could imagine what it’s like to be a 16-year-old living in Southwark, and also so the students could try to imagine being us, and all the complications of being an artist. So even football impacts me; I’m going back to the city more and more. Maybe that happens in later life. You want to return to your city of origin. “The Pool Of Life” was a huge billboard commissioned by Liverpool Biennial 2021, and was shown right in the heart of the shopping area; with all the girls, the lipstick and things like that. Those girls inspire me every time I go; these young women and that Liverpool glamour, the length of the eyelashes, the redness of the mouth, the hair extensions. They’re just such dandies. Such extraordinary dandies.’

Linder: Danger Came Smiling, Inverleith House, Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh, until 19 October, and A kind of glamour about me, Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh, 7 August, 6pm, as part of Edinburgh Art Festival; Linder & Marina Warner: Gimme Danger, Edinburgh Futures Institute, 9 August, 4.30pm, as part of Edinburgh International Book Festival; main picture: Charlotte Cullen.