Riflemaker

The art and the life of Penelope Slinger (b.1947 London) are inextricably interwoven. Hear What I Say is the second of three exhibitions focussing on the artist's early output; photographic collages, objects and sculptural works from the 1970s.

In 2009, her collages were exhibited at Tate St Ives as part of The Dark Monarch: Magic and Modernity in Modern Art, Tate, and in Angels of Anarchy: Women Artists & Surrealism, Manchester Art Gallery.

In these pieces, Slinger uses the tools provided by Surrealism to penetrate the female psyche, presenting herself as both subject and object in a group of collages and montages which sidestep the then current themes of 1960s and 70s art. Exhibited in London in 1977, the work's explicit depiction of 'feminine power' and its anarchic approach to life, challenged and provoked many of her peers as well as the critics. The artist left Britain in 1979, never to return; the Riflemaker exhibition being the first time the work will have been shown publicly in almost forty years.

Initially published in book form under the title An Exorcism, the photo-collage series, seven years in the making, was created in the tradition of the classical 'photo-romance', taking its cue from Max Ernst's Une Semaine de Bonte and La Femme 100 Têtes. In these works the artist explores the ultimate romance - the death and rebirth of Self. The action takes place in a deserted country mansion, the empty rooms of which represent the many chambers of a woman's being. Each image is a meditation on a particular state of consciousness. It represents a place where the lines between the world of dream and that of so-called 'reality' are undefined, as the subconscious is opened to the light of conscious scrutiny.

The series follows on from Slinger's first photo-book 50% The Visible Woman (1971) and the showing of her 3D works at the ICA's Young and Fantastic exhibition in 1969, when the artist was aged twenty-one. The final collection of the period, Mountain Ecstasy (1978), achieved a unique combination of the erotic and the mystical.

The narrative of this series has a 'mise-en-scène' which can be attributed to the artist's work with the all-women theatre troupe Holocaust (1971) and Slinger's appearance in and art direction of the feature film The Other Side of the Underneath (d. Jane Arden: now re-issued in a special edition by the BFI). In that year she also worked on the production and design for Picasso's play The Four Little Girls at the Open Space Theatre, London, at the same time developing an interest in Tantric Art which would guide her artistic and spiritual direction throughout the 1980s. She was named Woman of the Year in New York 1982, other recipients of the award being film director and union organiser Ellen Burstyn and US Ambassador Jeanne Kirkpatrick.

The artist describes her output as a "map of the journey of the Self". Surrealism allowed her to delve into the subconscious and emerge with archetypal glyphs. The next logical step for the artist was to include Tantric and Visionary influences which brought a further dimension to her artistic journey. She has, since then, woven her own mode of Surrealism together with a radical approach to spiritual energy forming a bridge from the subconscious to the superconscious, the realm of unlimited potential.

Her many works include The Secret Dakini Oracle (1978), her illustrations for Sexual Secrets: the Alchemy of Ecstasy (1979 & 2000), The Secret Dakini Oracle (1979) & The Path of the Mystic Lover (1993).

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"The primitive psyche has provided Penny Slinger with a brilliant means of expressing her drama. She unfolds the myth born from her own experience, the anatomy of her psyche, entwined with primordial images" Roland Penrose

"Penelope Slinger's exhibition showed us how powerfully a woman is able to transform Surrealism." Laura Mulvey, Spare Rib.

"Penny Slinger's latest photo-book is the ultimate expose. A cascade of photo-collage imagery which has all the emergent trepidation of Hesse's 'Steppenwolf'." Sheldon Williams, Art & Artists

Penelope Slinger was born in London in 1947, she took a pre-diploma at the Farnham School of Art and a degree in Art & Design at Chelsea College (1966-69). She exhibited in Young & Fantastic at the ICA on leaving college. Her work explores the human journey through life and time. She moved to America in the 1990s where she continues to work as an artist.