Robert Slingsby River of memories
River of memories

I painted  River of memories, after returning from the Richtersveld, a southern African, desert region of extraordinary sensitivity. This work occupies a quiet register, unfolding  slowly, like a river at night. As with all my art, the surface is defined by abstract linear markings, not only evocative of ancient rock engravings, but uninterrupted memory. I’ve used a small hut motif, a recurring sign in my ‘Slingsby’ rock engraving inspired visual language. It serves to suggest human presence at a scale that is intimate and hidden, rather than dominating; echoing the human to landscape relationship of the past.

In so doing, River of memories acknowledges continuity. It reflects on what preceded modern occupation, ecological systems and cultural traces that endure beneath contemporary transformation. Though grounded in the Richtersveld, the painting resonates universally. Across the world, landscapes now hold both the imprint of progress and the memory of what came before.

Together, After the flash and River of memories articulate two simultaneous realities: the acceleration of change and the persistence of older narratives embedded in place.


Biography Robert Slingsby

Robert Slingsby is an artist whose work is rooted in more than four decades of fieldwork in remote regions of Africa. His engagement began with the rock engravings of the Richtersveld, pecked into the black dolomite that punctuates this desert landscape along South Africa’s northern border.
Driven by a sustained fascination with Africa’s visual creativity, both ancient and contemporary, Slingsby expanded his fieldwork beyond the Richtersveld to other regions of the African continent and to rock engraving sites internationally. Recording and understanding these early visual languages remains the enduring propeller of his practice. Long immersion in these environments brought him into close contact with landscapes undergoing rapid transformation. Working in regions shaped by mining and agriculture, he registers the marks of Anthropocene man, not as polemic, but as observation. His engagement with land is inseparable from his engagement with the indigenous communities with whom he spends time, whose cultural memory remains embedded in their terrain. These encounters inform both the ethic and structure of his work.

Slingsby trained at the Vrije Academie, where rigorous attention to material and traditional technique formed the foundation of his practice. His paintings are defined by a precise linear system derived from the language of rock art. The time required to execute this exacting process is intrinsic to the authority of the image.
Central to his practice is a sustained preoccupation with the art of Africa. The lines in his work feel familiar because they draw on humanity’s earliest universal visual language, the non-figurative marks found in rock art. This language is not quoted; it is absorbed and rearticulated.
Its presence runs through every painting as fluently as a spoken tongue. Just as English carries meaning across continents, this pared-back visual language carries memory across millennia, transmitting early human expression into the present with clarity and restraint.

Slingsby’s paintings are measured meditations on continuity, how land records human presence and how visual language endures. Rooted in Africa yet resonant internationally, his work holds historical depth and contemporary relevance in equal measure.
 

Robert Slingsby Echo chamber - Gatecrasher