Linder: A kind of glamour about me (2025)
Co-commissioned by EAF (Edinburgh Art Festival) and Mount Stuart Trust, A kind of glamour about me presented a new performance by Linder in collaboration with choreographer Holly Blakey, composer Maxwell Sterling and fashion designer Ashish Gupta. For Linder, the title epitomises the transcendent power of the creative arts in a person’s identity and social mobility.
A kind of glamour about me points towards Walter Scott's account of glamour, one of the first ever references recorded:
“August 12. -- Wrote a little in the morning; then Duty and I have settled that this is to be a kind of holiday, providing the volume be finished to-morrow. I went to breakfast at Chiefswood, and after that affair was happily transacted, I wended me merrily to the Black Cock Stripe, and there caused Tom Purdie and John Swanston cut out a quantity of firs. Got home about two o'clock, and set to correct a set of proofs. James Ballantyne presages well of this work, but is afraid of inaccuracies -- so am I -- but things must be as they may. 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. I wonder if a pill of holy trefoil would dispel this fascination”
The performance debuted at Mount Stuart in June 2025, alongside an exhibition. Ashish Gupta’s costumes were a central element of the performance, appearing as a physical and performative manifestation of Linder’s distinctive photomontage practice: woven fragments, shaped as body parts and bodily adornments from armour to epaulettes, are worn, wrapped and rearranged in a continuous act of assembly and disassembly by the performers choreographed by Holly Blakey.
Supported by Art Fund and The Ampersand Foundation, the work took inspiration from Mount Stuart’s architecture and gardens, both rich in mythical and decorative motifs. Linder created a series of ‘traces’ - costumes, props, works on paper, photography, and writings - that subtly animated the interiors of the Neo-Gothic mansion.