Art Festival Announces 2025 Opening Event
Seminal feminist artist Linder will present A kind of glamour about me, a major new performance work, as the opening event of this year's Edinburgh Art Festival - to coincide with the exhibition Linder: Danger Came Smiling coming to Inverleith House, Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh.
Co-commissioned by EAF (Edinburgh Art Festival) and Mount Stuart Trust, A kind of glamour about me is 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 debuts at Mount Stuart on 14 June, alongside an exhibition running until 31 August 2025. After Mount Stuart, A kind of glamour about me will travel to the mystical Oak Lawn at the Royal Botanic Gardens in Edinburgh (7 August) to open EAF25. The work will weave together imagery from the stained glass windows, anthropomorphic furniture on Bute, references to Linder’s own archive of imagery and the enticing presence of nature situated across both sites.
Meanwhile, Linder’s major touring retrospective Linder: Danger Came Smiling will be presented within Inverleith House, one of EAF’s partner venues at the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh, opening on 23 May and continuing across the summer until 19 October. At Inverleith House, Linder’s retrospective, curated by Hayward Gallery Touring in collaboration with Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh, showcases 50 years of the pioneering feminist artist’s work, dissecting our fascination with the body and its representation.
Linder at the Royal Botanic Gardens Edinburgh for EAF and Mount Stuart. Photo: Charlotte Cullen. Outfit: Ashish. Stylist: Rebecca Palmer. Make-up: Kala Williams. Courtesy the artist and EAF.