She began to combine imagery that portrays women’s sexuality and domesticity to openly criticise conventional female roles and representation. She culled the materials from pornography publications, large-scale calendars showing idyllic English homes and gardens, as well as automobile, culinary, and fashion magazines.
In 1977 Garrett was asked to design his first record cover for the Buzzcocks which they called Orgasm Addict. He had worked with Sterling when they had produced a magazine called The Secret Public and decided to use one of her feminist photomontages. He flipped it upside down, rendered it in cobalt blue and set it against a bright yellow backdrop.
The collage depicted a naked woman with grinning mouths instead of nipples and whose head is a steam iron: “Well, the iron came from an Argos catalogue and the female torso came from a photographic magazine called Photo. I never cleared the copyright but no one noticed, so it was alright . . . It was made in a Salford bedroom; I had a sheet of glass, a scalpel and piles of women’s mags.” As Sterling went on to say: “At this point, men’s magazines were either DIY, cars or porn. Women’s magazines were fashion or domestic stuff. So, guess the common denominator – the female body. I took the female form from both sets of magazines and made these peculiar jigsaws highlighting these various cultural monstrosities that I felt there were at the time.”
The image was originally in colour but Garrett changed it to just two colours so it was cheaper to print. Orgasm Addict was released as the Buzzcocks’ debut single in November 1977. Sterling loved its treatment, and it put forward her feminist perspective publicly on a record sleeve. It comes as no surprise that the song was controversial due to its sexual content and was banned by the BBC. Sterling went on to briefly share a house with Morrissey and became known as his muse, photographing him extensively in the early 1990s as he toured the US. He used many of her images for his record covers as a solo artist.
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