Cosey Fanni Tutti's journey through art, porn and music

It is fitting that we meet a woman once described as a "wrecker of civilisation" in the grounds of a ruined priory.

Cosey Fanni Tutti, a founding member of the influential band Throbbing Gristle and radical performance artist, was given the title by Conservative MP Sir Nicholas Fairbairn in 1976 after an art exhibition, Prostitution, led to a tabloid furore and a House of Commons debate.

Prostitution, created by Tutti and her colleagues at the collective COUM Transmissions, showed at the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London and included pornographic images of her alongside used bandages and tampons.

"It has taken 50 years for [the exhibition] to be revisited and understood for what it was really trying to say," says the 73-year-old who lives near King's Lynn, Norfolk.

Tutti modelled for pornographic magazines in her work as a performance artist and pages from these publications featured in Prostitution, but were hidden away in a back room.

She says she "infiltrated" the porn industry to turn the tables on the consumers of these magazines and subvert the male gaze - the watcher now being watched.

"It's my point of view. It was my action," she says in the grounds of Castle Acre Priory, Norfolk.

She wanted the exhibition to "bring [porn] into a different kind of viewpoint and interpretation" and to "empower women to think that [the porn industry] is something we have to discuss, regarding how you think of it, as either subverting it or going along [with it]".

The porn industry in the 1970s involved "some of the most unlikely people", she says.

"I won't say who they are, but they were well known at the time. Famous names."

Exhibits from Prostitution are now on display at the Maxwell Graham Gallery in New York City until 28 June, which coincides with the release of her new album 2T2.

"I haven't been to see the exhibition because of the situation in America. I've no desire to go to America at the moment," she says.

Throbbing Gristle produced extraordinary - sometimes terrifying - music and are regarded as founders of the genre known as industrial, named after the record label they founded.

Active between 1975 and 1981, and again between 2004 and 2010, they have influenced acts including Soft Cell, Nine Inch Nails and Ministry.

Today, Tutti shares a converted chapel with her partner, frequent collaborator and former bandmate, Chris Carter.

The couple left London with their son in the early 1980s and bought the chapel at auction after spotting it in a local newspaper.

They had previously been living in squats, a culture that has declined to Tutti's regret.

"It's not just the people that want to live an alternative lifestyle and be creative and do music and art and so on, but it's also just impacting people that just want to live, have a family, just work and have a decent life," she says.

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