PAINTINGS THROUGH THE DECADES -  SPECIFIC YEARS BELOW

2010 UCT Irma Stern Museum

Review 'CC - Unlimited power' June 2010 exhibition at the UCT Irma Stern Museum (see more art works by following 2010 link above)

South African Art Times July 2010

Lloyd Pollak

For the past thirty years, a specific location, a specific people, and a specific culture have been the wellspring of Robert Slingsby's art. The place is Richtersveld in the Northern Cape. The people are the Nama, the descendants of the nigh extinct San, and the culture is the animism to which their ancestors gave concrete expression by whittling their cosmogony into stone millennia ago.

Holistic ideals of balance and harmony were the foundation of Khoisan spirituality in which man and nature form a continuum. The petroglyphs served ritualistic goals as keyholes into the beyond, and their flinty magic unleashed itself during ritual trance dances when they mediated congress between the shaman and the ancestral spirits, divinities and cosmic forces who spoke through him to the tribe.

The hundreds of thousands of inscribed rocks scattered throughout the Richtersveld present a hallowed world in which the earth, the firmament, the rain, rivers, crops, flora and fauna are all seen as living forces in constant communication with mankind. Slingsby's intimate contact with these shingly masterpieces gave him keen appreciation of the Sans spiritual wisdom and reverence for nature, and his paintings form a tribute to this defunct tradition.

The artists intaglio technique of incising motifs into smooth surfaced acrylic canvases mirrors the San art of inscribing motifs into rock. Prolonged communing with the petroglyphs has trained his eye to diagrammaticise the visual universe, and his mark making invokes the San lexicon of mystic signs and symbols. A runic script of miniaturised crosses, crescents, arrows, triangles, circles, concentric rings, starts pentagrams, stripes, zigzags, ovals, spirals and dots fill the field, and provide a philosophical yardstick whereby we can evaluate the ethical implications of the large scale, figurative motifs.

'Mechanical factor' 2008 Acrylic on canvas 210 x 170 cm's

'Mechanical factor' voices the artists fear that rampant consumerism and global warming - phenomena inconceivable within the context of traditional Khoisan culture - jeopardise the survival of earth and mankind. The car dominates his iconography, and although it spells freedom and the open road, it also implies acquisitive profligacy, the carbon fuelled economy and mans violation of nature. Abandoned jalopys spill over the canvas, surrounding its central feature, the hugely magnified bucket of the excavator that will serve as a dump for the phalanx of aggressive vehicles relegated to the scarp heap by the strategy of planned obsolescence. man is absent, and the convertibles and limousines with their long phallic bonnets become a stand-in for humanity and its lust for self-aggrandizement, wealth and power.

The gigantic scale and heavily accented three dimensionality of the monstrous bucket imbue it with greater reality than anything else in the painting. the voracious toothed jaw of this behemoth gives it a threatening presence as it impatiently waits to be filled with the junk that will soon engulf the planet. Horror vacui composition, teeming pullulations of wriggly, hyperactive lines, and their bleep and flash of vividly contrasting high-key hues, convey the souped-up pace of this urban jungle, and the San emblemata function as atropopaic amulets and talismans warding off imminent catastrophe.

Slingsby views Green Point stadium as an architectural fanfaronade of fascist tendency, and in 'Conspicuous consumption', this enormity is planted amidst a devastated landscape strewn with San hierograms. Centuries before the Dutch arrived, this site was the stomping ground of the San, yet the stadium, modeled on a Xhosa headdress, fails to acknowledge their presence and contribution. Helicopters patrol the sky and act as instruments of surveillance and control, and the clash of fiery reds and burnt-earth blacks expresses the artists rage and indignation.

The 'progress' and 'development' wrought by globalization are seen as morally regressive, and the stadium - the hubristic outcome of megalomaniac town planning - becomes an embodiment of the historic forces that visited genocide upon the San.

'Blind rage at Rooiwal' is a literal, rather than an imaginative, response to the utter destitution in which the Nama now live. Photographs reveal that Slingsby simply reproduces this ethnic scrap heap, and the verbatim approach proves both compositionally and stylistically unsatisfactory. The bulk of the painting is a yawning void; the demolished churches visually unexciting' and the linear stylization of the clouds and kopjes jar with the naturalistic idiom applied to the boy and horse.

'In ten minutes' 2008 Acrylic on canvas 200 x 120 cm's 

The artists approach veers from the representational to de-centred, all-over, semi-abstract, compositions like 'Moment of flight' and 'In ten minutes'. In the latter, swinging arcs and swirling lines spin over the canvas, weaving a jiggling linear web of colour zones and overlapping syncopated lines. Scale is uniform, and the highly energised surfaces appear completely unified. However such aesthetic harmony comes at a price, for the insistent patterning and boogie-woogie rhythms distract us from whatever message the artist seeks to convey.

One questions whether the jitter, agitato and zoom of Slingsby's kinetically over-charged style can adequately covey the gravity of his subject matter. All too often the simplified imagery suggests comic book & toy box sources rather than the art of the San. In tandem with keyed-up candy floss pinks and pillar box reds, it creates a blend far too frolicsome and exuberant to convincingly enact the artists prophecies of doom.

Slingsby's most memorable and emotive paintings are his smoldering red apocalypse like 'Apathy of entitlement'. A skeletal colossus, akin to the therianthropes of traditional San art, looms over the poisoned landscape strewn with emblems of oppression - ancestral bones, graveyard crosses, manacles, union jacks, ox wagons and bayonets. This emaciated personification of the Nama people fixes the viewer with a baleful accusatory stare that incriminates us in his degradation. His grey flesh, starved body, skull-like head and supplicating pose pronounce him in extremis. Although death appears imminent, wings sprout from his back as he enters a trance traveling beyond space and time in search of supernatural strength.

Another product of the catastrophic imagination is seen in the tortured San titan frozen in a crucificatory pose amidst a holocaustal landscape in 'Pushing the limit'. Can the San possibly survive, these paintings ask. It is our obligation to provide a positive answer.

Bell-Roberts Gallery 

Art South Africa - Review by Hazel Friedman for Winter 2006 issue

In his book on Namaqualand, photographer Freeman Patterson describes this contrasting landscape as a “garden of the gods”. It is not the softer side of the Northern Cape that provides the most vivid illustration of its otherworldly propertie s. It is the desolate, jagged lunar-like contours of the Richtersveldt.

This is Robert Slingsby’s spiritual and creative locus. Inspired by the San petroglyphs and the Nama community inhabiting this rocky hinterland, for over 30 years he has obsessively recorded its topographical markings, their interconnection with ancient societies and their role as a means of entering parallel universes. Access to these alternate realities is gained through rituals that allow us, if only brie fly, to see beyond the limits of our own perceptions.

The most recent pit stop of Slingsby’s ongoing odyssey comprise two related bodies of work. The first was exhibited in the Bahamas and also at the Bell-Roberts . The second, which includes remnants of the first, was recently displayed at London ’s Square One Gallery. In a sense the Bell-Roberts show represents a return from self- exile by a widely acclaimed artist whose work, in the last decade, has fallen out of kilter with more fashionable trends in contemporary art. While many of his post-94 peers have renegotiated the politics of representation through new forms of cultural currency, Slingsby has remained focused, intuitively, on the “shamanistic” aspects of art, a paradigm that might seem anachronistic – quixotic even – to a discourse focused predominantly on deconstructing issues of this world, particularly ethnicity, race and gende r.

Yet he has quietly forged on and his work has been championed overseas, in terms of its ability to transcend the constraints of geography and history. Entitled Power House, his ‘return’ exhibition revolves around the inexorable changes occurring in a landscape seemingly frozen in the romantic, ethnocentric imagination. Slingsby’s iconography is the idiosyncratic dwellings inhabited by the Nama, which are now being replaced – courtesy of increasing urbanisation and political wrangling – by faceless cement houses.

Through bronze sculptures and monochromatic drawings he attempts to evoke the residue of a mystically charged landscape in which the soon-to-be demolished human structures feed off and encapsulate the potency of the environme nt. But while the sense of oneness is successfully evoked through the exquisitely executed bronze s, the monochromatic drawings resemble fortresses erected in a landscape bereft of people, blocking out, instead of embracing the ancient environme nt. Inadvertently they become a form of armoury for the artist himself.

But in his Square One body of works, Slingsby has returned to the exuberant colours anthropomorphic forms and multi-layered motifs of his earlier output. Consisting largely of mixed media panels, including corroded community artifacts and other fragile material traces, they suggest a process of incorporation and integration, rather than simply inscription.

These works evoke an empathy with place that transcends ethnicity and changing techno- economic contexts. As such, they constitute the marking and re-making of individual and collective histories as part of a never- ending quest to locate the outer limits of experience, and to cross them.

Hazel Friedman

Art South Africa Winter 2006

ROBERT SLINGSBY  2006

Making art from the detritus of  Apartheid   

Robert Slingsby comes from an old Yorkshire family renowned for its involvement with the world famous  Slingsby glider which dates back to pre second world war aviation .  Perhaps Robert  inherited this physic energy which led him on a path that eventually gave him the universal fame for his paintings which he now enjoys.

There is nothing  more inspiring than flying in an engineless aeroplane with only the whistle of the wind breaking up the pure silence known only by eagles and gliders  slicing through the atmosphere chasing  thermals for lift. For some reason artists and writers who are involved with flight become greatly inspired and perhaps Robert inherited this abstract appreciation of flight in his DNA.  

Robert started painting and collecting things from the age of three and has never looked back. Now internationally accepted as a great artist he has reached fifty an age when every artist takes a step backwards and takes a good hard look of what went before and what might be for the future.  I had the honour of meeting Robert during his exhibition at the  Square 1 Gallery and for an hour I listened to his fascinating ideas for  the creative role of the artist.    

  “I don’t think art and expressing oneself is a choice.  If you have a choice you wouldn’t do it although once you have embarked on the holy grail of the artist if there is a choice factor involved, then the choice is not to make it easy , The choice is to be stimulated by life. The choice is to be a thinking human being . I don’t want to  get stuck in an old paradigm , I don’t want to be someone  subservient to any one or regime that might elect themselves to make the rules according to the ego of the individual.  I want to be someone who expands his consciousness as much as he can whilst I am on this planet.  I do that and I find it is selfish but so be it.  I believe that for me as an artist and painter this is perhaps the necessary  way forward. Now at fifty I am entering a chapter where I feel that I must adopt a lighter attitude towards aspects of my life although this doesn’t mean I have to spend less time in my studio…..”                                  

Appropriate words with which Robert Slingsby gave a vision of  his serious role as an internationally acclaimed South African  painter who started his life with a  philosophy and  perspective that differed from the South African Establishment. He found apartheid  a monstrous and  horrific nightmare but due to the repression of the prevalent political regime he was only able to express his disapproval through  politically didactic paintings. Any  overheard conversations that denigrated apartheid was likely to put the speaker in prison and in the fifties the police had eyes and ears everywhere. This ethnic fascism was a style of politics which Robert abhorred and as  soon as he could he left South Africa to take up residence in Holland where he stayed for many years.  

Robert is not only an artist but an artist who has certain humanitarian  qualities that extend far beyond the requirements of an ordinary painter. But then real artists have two responsibilities and Robert is a real artist. The first is for the expression of their art form and the second ( related to the first ) is a comment on the society in which he lives via his personal technique, paint brush chisel or whatever.  Artists who use words as their form of censure have a comparatively easy format.  More difficult is the comment via the paint brush or chisel. 

Before  Robert left South Africa he matured as a human being and like the true artist, reacted to the dark days of  the seventies until in 1976, the streets of Cape Town reverberated with the mob noise created by the education riots. This was the catalyst that decided Robert to leave his native land and in 1977 he left  South Africa to study at the Vrije Akademie in Den Haag Holland.  There he developed as a painter in oils  producing  a more classical style of  pictures with images  easily recognised as distinct from the abstract techniques of the latter half of the twentieth century.  

After Holland he returned to post apartheid Africa and lived among the people who were the victims of this iniquitous political structure. He learned of their deserved but denied humanity by becoming part of their sub culture  when he visited the blacks in their own environment and shanty town homes. He began to understand their tragedy and their past by  walking the deserts and studying their thrown away detritus which Robert found during his “walkabouts” in the sands of  “ Table Bay ”  and the desert lands close to their places of  work. It was this detritus which gave Robert the inspiration for remarkable exhibition which filled the walls at the Square 1 Gallery Chelsea.  Efficiently organised by Sandie Lowry , the Square 1 Gallery is a relatively new, stylish, elegant and fashionable gallery at the Fulham end of the Kings Road where Robert made an indelible impression and  a powerful statement about the dark days of South African  apartheid and the heartless use of what was basically slave labour and the employment of human beings as animals and  beasts of burden for which they were paid just enough for  basic existence survival.  Whereas the ordinary member of the establishment waited for the abolishment of apartheid before adopting the now fashionable politically correct modern status quo attitude of South Africa.   Robert Slingsby was a pathfinder for a minority which, with the help of  Nelson  Mandella, was to grow into a large majority of  people  whose sense of humanity raised strong objections to an iniquitous way of life that some white settlers fought to maintain.  Robert’s incredible creations  hanging on the walls at the  Square 1 Gallery were a powerful,  retrospective statement of  the evil of  apartheid and the kind of life the blacks were condemned to.  He used ordinary artifacts and detritus which had been abandoned since the early days of industrial apartheid and thrown  away by the black workers from the diamond mines and other industries  where they worked more like prisoners in a chain gang than people with the rights of a human being.  Many years later Robert had wandered these lands and found them buried and hidden in the sands of South Africa . He took them home and added them to his collection and finally converted them to an art form with intrinsic beauty.  

At first glance, without being told , one simply does not recognise what Robert has used to make up his creation but, on closer inspection, it suddenly dawns upon one that they are an eclectic selection of  jugs, bowls, cans, utensils, all of which once had a use and were the owned by the black workers who had suffered so much. There was even an ancient ( 40 years plus) stolen money box , ( with indications that it had been forced opened )  a string instrument constructed out of a large tin with attachments for the strings , a bike carrier still with some of its original wire and  many other things which could be recognised only with difficulty as the original object when first manufactured. As well as such commonplace objects there were constructions made out of  brass and representing the shanty town shacks and even a small village which had candles fired inside, glowing with a life of their own. Whatever Robert Slingsby created he transformed them by what can only be described as magical transmogrification of the true artist. He took the discarded artifacts and detritus of  apartheid and made them via acrylic on canvas or mixed media into a magic that few people can create.

Copyright       Dorian van Braam .  The Renaissance Press March / April  2006.

Above: "Middleclass 49" Acrylic on canvas

ART

THE title of ROBERT SLINGSBY’s latest exhibition captures concisely aspects of the social commentary embedded in his new works. Dubbed POWER HOUSE (at Bell-Roberts Contemporary Gallery until January 7), it’s an eloquent protest against the marginalisation of the forgotten people of the Richtersveld.

Slingsby has been recording the petroglyph rock engravings in the region for almost 25 years. While his initial interest was with these designs, he later became fascinated by the Nama people and their heritage and placement in contemporary SA.

To illustrate his discontent about the Nama’s unwritten history, he’s chosen the shack as emblematic for the plight of a “lost” people. His installations of a rusty old bed and an indoor scene full of dilapidated artifacts like old shoes, tins and battered kettles collected from the region, make a political statement for the disadvantaged and displaced.

But the real artistic merit of Power House is Slingsby’s outstanding bronze sculptures. The nuts, bolts and panels of these tin shacks have an intensity that transcends the medium. His smaller Open Door series scales down with a similar look and feel, while Behind Bars pays testimony to inhumanity with its row of tiny houses perched next to the fence of an opulent golf course.

This artist views the homestead as a conceptual piece made from a collection of found objects — “living, breathing installations, defining who we are”. And here he’s attempted to capture the colours, textures and influence of the petroglyphs in the surfaces of his work. “For me, this potency has continued into the shack homes and this is what I am trying to convey in my art today. The monotones of my canvases and dotted texture of the surfaces is designed to convey the potency of the petroglyphs through the visual association.”

Slingsby didn’t want Power House to be an elitist showcase and his assortment of pieces are accessible on different levels. As such, it’s a powerful and direct artistic statement that questions issues of belonging, identity and history.

He has just returned from the Bahamas where he was invited to participate in a group exhibition hosted by Princess Azmat Guirey.

In March next year Slingsby will present a solo exhibition in London . This is his first exhibition in Cape Town since 1995.

Jane Mayne

�Bell-Roberts, 89 Bree Street, Cape Town ; Tel: (021) 422-1100.

Below: "Inheritance of Rome" Acrylic on canvas

Below: "It won't be much longer" Acrylic on canvas

“Angling for a different fish”
Title by Professor Neville Dubow

In Slingsby's terms the cow is a symbol of Cape Town, the Ballmen gluttonous figures that feed off her. The sand underneath carries marks of hoofprints; the cowpats alongside are gold. The cow's rump is spattered with gold excrement. 

I said the work marks a rite of passage. In a post apartheid South Africa artists have had to move on to new subject matter. The clear divisions of the apartheid years, the divisions between Them and Us, the bad guys and the good, have been blurred. Politicians puff on about a renaissance but the country stews in corruption. The succubi and the incubi may well still be with us, but in different guises. 

Slingsby, as an artist must, has moved on. He has turned his prodigious energy to other makings, older markings, to the rock engravings of Africa. He has compiled a serious library of files of petroglyphs that he has studied and photographed. He sees in them connections and meanings that are both ancient and predictive. Their forms and energies have been appropriated into his work. In a sense they are the progenitors of new ballmen, but benign omens now, archetypal makings that spiral, coil and sunburst through his work.

It's as if those earlier hoofprints in the sand have yielded to further excavations. The sands of Milnerton beach in Table Bay have been sifted through to provide Slingsby with material for his current series of works. These were in the process of being assembled when I visited his studio. They have a uniform format: framed boxes 350 mm square. The framed outer surface area is covered with a vinyl plaster that carries Slingsby's trademark incisions - the spirals, loops, sunbursts and ladders that provide continuity with his earlier work. 

Set into the surface are recessed boxes of geometric and free form shapes. And placed into these are the forms that fill the boxes in the venerable tradition of the objet trouvé: the flotsam of the found object, the detritus of a throw-away culture scoured by the tide, pounded into thumb-sized fragments. A random sampling would include all in plastic - bobbins, detonators left over from marine earthworks, tags, seals, impellers, pegs, filters, bottle caps, and fragments of children's toys. 

One in particular catches my eye: It is the rear end of a small horse that puts me in mind of a different kind of plasticity, the clay horses of archaic Greece. So there are curious continuities (I recall that the 1979 cow painting is titled 'The Acrobats of Crete'). Prominent in the stock-pile are variously coloured fluorescent glow sticks - originally attached to fishing lines - which now will angle for another kind of fish.

Slingsby is open to discussion about the format of his work. I express the thought that the boxes polychrome and jewel-like provide formal interest from the rear as well as the front and might well be slotted into developments of the ladder-like structures that he has used in former work. These are archetypal forms he has drawn on in the past, which derive from the Nama petroglyphs from the Richtersveld, the moon landscape south of the Orange River. 

He seems to like the idea. We will see how he develops it. There is also talk of fibre optical cable. Robert Slingsby is a protean maker, and the work I am writing about is work in progress.

When the Dutch colonised the Cape they gave the name Strandloper to the original inhabitants of Table Bay. It means literally (and in its 17 th century colonial context, a touch disparagingly) beach walker. At the start of the 21st century, we see these things differently. One might see Robert Slingsby as extending the concept: a new millennial Strandloper, a free spirit, combing the beach, marking and marking, transferring meaning from detritus to jewel box. 

The view from the studio gives on to mountains. The view inside points to the past and to the future and the continuities that bind them.


Professor Neville Dubow

From the windows of Robert Slingsby's studio in a fold of the mountains above the harbour town of Hout Bay, there is a seductively expansive view. Through a 180-degree arc one's eye picks up the peaks of the Karbonkelberg, Klein Leeukoppie and the back of the Twelve Apostles. Beyond lies the Atlantic. If one were to follow the coastline in an easterly direction one would reach Table Bay and Milnerton beach. To the north, a few miles offshore, lies Robben Island.

All of these elements, the mountain with its bluegum trees, the bay with its tides that deposit flotsam on the beach, and the beach itself, have a bearing on the activities of Slingsby's studio. The studio, generously proportioned, is built from the timber of the gum trees that back on to it. The studio's posts and beams are hand-adzed; the hands are Slingsby's.

He is a maker. He makes structures and he makes marks. The marks are layered. The processes of marking, layering and making are the DNA code of his work.

The raw stuff of Slingsby's current work is stacked in the studio in baskets. Their contents are bits of driftwood and plastic that have been brought in by the tide, covered by the sand, and dug up by the artist. More about them later. 

As to the Island, international icon and heritage site, it's enough to say that it impinges, one way or another, on the consciousness of all South Africans, not least our artists. It's a situation not without its irony. As one drives into Hout Bay the principal road junction offers you a choice of three directions. The one dead ahead of you is a broad new boulevard that leads straight into a squatter camp. The road is named N R Mandela.

In the locust years of apartheid, when the man was locked up on the island, and both were meant to be shoved away from national consciousness, South African artists responded to the political situation in various ways. Some were overt; some were covert; most proved to be ineffectual in terms of realpolitik. But they produced significant pointers to inevitable change.

Eco artist’s maigical maps of Africa

1999

By  Susan Nickallis published in U.K.newspaper - The Scotsman

 Robert Slingsby’s vibrant acrylics bring a welcome dash of colour to an otherwise drab summer in Edinburgh .

At first glance, the paintings by the South African artist appear as a glorious tangle of shapes and symbols. But closer inspection reveals intricate maps which tell of stories and journeys in a similar way to the Aboriginal songlines and sand paintings.

That said, Slingsby’s extraordinary melding of the old and the new into a complex jigsaw of images is unlike that of any other artists. Many of the dominant issues in Slingby’s paintings deal with his concern for Africa and its environment.

“White Trash” and “Road Kill” offer a silent protest to the rusty machines and cars strewn across the veldt – a contrast to the ecologically sound bushman who leave few footprints on the landscape. “The rise and fall” has Table Mountain as its central image, representing the positive and negative aspects of diamond mining. Apparently elephants and whales make similar high pitched sounds and in “Elephant Sonics”, Slingsby explores the concept that they might talk to each other.

The paintings might be one-dimensional, but Slingsby’s etching into the thick paint creates an effect not unlike the ancient symbols carved into stone, many of which he incorporates into his work. There is a faint whiff of Mondrian and Picasso in paintings such as “Passing Dreams” and “Gaia and the long memories” featuring musical instruments in cubist shapes.

Slingsby is not the sort of artist to confine himself to one medium. He sculpts aluminium into Chinese and Egyptian motives, which sway seductively from the ceiling. They also appear as part of his large “Spiral”, lit with purple neon lighting, impressively made out of one piece of aluminum. In “Opening of the Heart”, African shapes emerge out of the striking alunimium frame, made specially for the work by Slingsby. Inside a yellow heart beats above the body’s intestines, representing a new and outward looking South Africa .

This excellent exhibition is presented by the newly-established Sable Gallery, which specializes in showing South African and Scottish art.

Robert Slingsby at the Bourne Fine Art Dundas Gallery continues until; Saturday, 10am – 6.30pm, telephone 0131-558 9363

“World Tour” 

Oil on Canvas 1995

Private Collection United States 

Reflects the disparity that exists between the aspirations of the “haves” and those of the “have nots”.

This area has proved to be a treasure trove of art engraved by the aboriginal people into the dolomite rock that peppers this African landscape. Because these visions are a product of the human nervous system, the y are cross-cultural, timeless and universal.

These images became the foci of his work, giving them a geographical significance to his art. Debate relating to the use of rock art as inspiration for contemporary art has led to examples of his work being cited in academic literature as well as school text books.

1989

Oil on Canvas

Having spent five years studying art in Holland , it was inevitable that Robert should experience vast exposure to the great Dutch masters. In particular the genius of Rembrandt made a deep impression. His painting titled “The anatomy lesson of Doctor Tulp” served as inspiration for this painting.

Rembrandt’s painting, which was executed in the latter part of the Renaissance, reflected a change in th e acquisition of medical knowledge where Dr. Tulp and his colleagues relied more on established fact than a heritage of fiction. Similarly this painting with the patterned mask-like heads represents a change in attitude towards knowl e dge. Today, humanity relying on logic and the sciences has become alienated from nature , placing their trust in the computer as it ushers us into the twenty-first century.  

DESCENT INTO ANARCHY

Oil on Canvas, 191x236cm ( Made up of 2 panels)

Artists Collection

In 1986 racial; confrontation, a result of forty years of apartheid, flared into outbursts of civil violence. This violence brought about by the unyielding attitude of the extreme right-wing not only kindled a state of anarchy in our physical world but threatened our spiritual values as well.

Inspired by Zadkines tribute to destruction of Rotterdam , “ The Destroyed City” I have attempted to express the dee p-rooted emotions of the times. All superfluous symbolic detail other than the human form are eliminated. The oppressed figures with their arms defensively outstretched above their heads stand with backs arched straining under the pressures of the oppressor symbolised by the unbending red, black and white lines.

Oil on Canvas, 128x150cm

Childhood with its lack of political constraints suggests the possibility and hope of positive changes in our society. These are the sentiments expressed in "Communication" in contrast to the dictatorial attitude so prevalent in South Africa during 1984.

The inspiration for this painting was the chance observation of children of various racial groups playing freely together. Four children, unburdened by the political pressures of adulthood are captured with their arms raised and intertwined, whilst clasping hands thus convey an elevation of the spirit.

On my return from Europe, the need to walk again in Africa was very strong, The heat, the anger, the separation was everywhere. But none seemed to be more marginalisd than the Nama people of the Richtersveld. I asked the district surgeon at Alexandra Bay what had been done for the Nama people,  he replied, less than nothing. Their land had been claimed as a diamond area, off limits to everyone except the miners; their religion and way of life seemed in danger of disappearing entirely. And yet beneath our feet in that hot mountain desert, lay a treasure trove of imagery almost entirely absent from South African literature, the rock engravings.

While it was fashionable to seek the true creative sprit of Southern Africa in the mud huts of the Ndebele, the pottery and beadwork of the Zulu, the sculpture of Venda, it seemed as though the contribution made by this imagery of in the Western Cape would remain unexplored.  

Thus began a journey into other cultures where the engravings occur and what appeared isolated and hidden proven universal. These images are truly to be found amongst all primitive cultures. They are not exclusive to the Hopi or the Aborigine but speak a common language across the globe.

The interest in this universal imagery lead to a contemplation on the meaning that underlay all ancient cultures. The Egyptian Hieroglyphics seemed a natural point of departure. The Sumerian clay tablets would throw more light on the mystery. The imagery of crop circles seemed to me to have so much in common with the engravings that it almost certainly confirms a cosmic connection.

What started as an endeavour to help the most marginalised became the central discovery of who I was. The journey outward became the journey to myself and my place in the cosmos. 

1979

Oil on Canvas

"The Architects of Apartheid" also painted in Holland in 1979, depicts a black and white cow with the profile of Table Mountain representing the ‘mother’. The ‘ballmen’ are a direct consequence of the muddled arrangement of legs in the ‘Whites Only’ painting. They symbolize my feeling of having to appear eternally optimistic while inside I felt the shame of a gluttonous Buddha. The compartmentalization and colour within the ‘ballmen’ are alienated from their natural surrounding. The gold cow-dung was the lie. They were the fruits of the apartheid myth.

Painted whilst living in Den Haag, Holland and studying at the Vrije Akademie. Slingsby was known as a Dutch fine painter or Fyn Schilders. This was a period of ultra realism with oil on wooden panels prepared in traditional Dutch techniques and painted with the finest brushes, at times having only a single bristle for the extreme attention to detail.

1977

Oil on canvas

Painted in Holland while studying at the Vrije Akademie, Den Haag, Holland. Having left South Africa shortly after the education riots of 1976, Holland was sympathetic to the anti-apartheid cause. Robert had a total of twenty-four exhibitions in Holland, with major shows depicting a clear message of resistance. It was works like a "Whites only" which led to an attempt on his life at a time when it was positively life threatening to make anti-apartheid art.

The catalyst in my departure being the education riots of 1976. The painting represents the brutality, separateness and an inability to accept each others differences and understand each others sameness that is the mindset of the apartheid situation. The ‘whites only’ sign on the beach is defied by the African women as the bravery of the African warrior entices one into the shark attack. The grotesque white cut-out leg of the painted board, represents the fat and gluttony of selfish pride. The semi-circle cut-out into which one would place ones face - is what was imposed if one was to appear respectable. The finger pointing to the chest asks the question "Why me?". The finger pointing upwards reflects the consequences.

1977

This painting is about separation, self gratification in the light of perpetual poverty and labour.

1972

This is the first oil painting that Slingsby ever painted and it was also the first painting that he ever sold. It was also sold at his first exhibition held at Bishops in the "Art Loft" in 1972.

This painting almost has a prophetic feel to it and denotes the feel of foreboding for a young person growing up in apartheid South Africa. The painting depicts a man looking over a wall viewing himself being buried. The being that looks on is a seer. The painting speaks of a wasteland being denied its promise to bloom.