The former punk and feminist agitator straddles two new exhibitions – Dave Haslam reviews both.

Linder dropped her surname (Sterling) and began to establish her reputation in Manchester in the late 1970s, mostly as an artist specialising in collage, but also fronting the band Ludus. Back then you might have found her down some side-street at long-gone venues like the Ranch, or browsing Grass Roots bookshop or with a scalpel in a rented room in Whalley Range cutting up porn magazines and articles about domestic appliances and make-up tips. But this Spring, you’ll find her in two major gallery spaces; one, the Hepworth in Wakefield and, the second, a career retrospective at the Musée d’Art Moderne in Paris. The Paris show is genuinely a huge accolade for Linder and testament to nearly four decades of provocative and captivating work.

The Paris show is laid out chronologically over half a dozen rooms, going back to when Linder arrived at Manchester Polytechnic and embraced punk.  Punk was a cultural revolt which encouraged participation and a battle cry to change your world. Grand sounding! But in reality activity in Manchester was limited to a few small cells based around fanzines, labels and venues. Linder fell in with the band Buzzcocks and began to adapt her collage/college work to design sleeves, flyers and posters. The most famous result of this early activity is the sleeve to their “Orgasm Addict” single – a naked woman with an iron for a head and smiling lips for nipples – but it wasn’t a one off, as the exhibition reveals. During this very prolific period Linder produced the “Pretty Girls” series: lounging naked women with heads replaced by cameras  and kitchen appliances.

Before we see any collages in the Paris show, we’re treated to a set of photographs taken at Dickens – one of those long-gone clubs – where Linder, in the late 1970s, mingled with gays, trannies and cross-dressers. These images roots Linder in her formative years – glamour against all odds, and outsider Manchester – and, additionally, the photos introduce a string of key Linder themes: the body as image, the body as a cage, the body in performance.

At the Hepworth, there are no genitals or strap-ons or even key lime pies, but there is performance

As the show unfolds, motifs are repeated and reworked, a generation of domesticated and objectified women, lips replacing nipples, cream cakes for genitals. I was there with my 16 year-old daughter, at an age when she doesn’t to need to read 1970s feminist texts to appreciate the potency of some of the recurring preoccupations with sex, food, and body image. Linder’s show at Stuart Shave/Modern Art in 2011 used current era mainstream pornographic imagery – more aggressive and lurid than the kind of images she took a scalpel to 35 years ago – and some of that recent series was in Paris too: big frames, hyper-real print quality, all orifices penetrated, her free floating roses and cakes and sweet treats half obscuring vulvas. I asked my daughter if she’d seen the collage where Linder had an erect penis replaced by a chocolate éclair. “I know”, she said, “and did you see the key lime pie?”

Linder’s career is about more than collage, though. The Paris show also displays her work on the “Secret Public” fanzine and a number of photo sets, including some taken in a Moss Side gym and some of her pal Morrissey, while a film of Ludus performing at the Hacienda in 1982 is projected onto one wall, Linder wearing a mighty strap on. At the Hepworth, there are no genitals or strap-ons or even key lime pies, but there is an element of performance. On 11 May, the exhibition culminates in Linder’s ballet work entitled The Ultimate Form with a musical score by Cinematic Orchestra guitarist Stuart McCallum and costumes by designer Pam Hogg.

Generally, the Hepworth show is a more gentle affair than you’d expect, but gentle is appropriate, given it’s one of three exploring the legacy of Barbara Hepworth (the other two artists showing are Jessica Jackson Hutchins and Alice Channer).  Of the three artists, Linder is probably the one who engages most with Hepworth’s life. She’s homed in on Hepworth’s interest in dance, fashion, nature, and the wider cultural world, particularly of the 1950s; the world beyond her sculpture studio. According to the show’s curator Sam Lackey, “Linder’s helped us think about Barbara Hepworth it a totally new way.”

The final room of the Linder’s Hepworth show is particularly stunning. Ten large lightboxes feature collages inspired by dance, with a clear look and feel of the 1950s, with some of the aesthetic of Cecil Beaton’s best work. There is a real sense of beauty, reflecting the serene, organic qualities of Hepworth’s sculpture.  So Linder helps us think about Hepworth in a new way, just as she’s helped us to think about so much in so many different ways over the decades. The lightboxes are enchanting and unforgettable, The Ultimate Form sounds unmissable. The Linder story continues.