'Don't look at me in that Tone of Voice'

'Orgasm'

• 'Then Circe rose
• triumphant
• from the rock
• fashioning steel about her
• as her weapon
• and her lure.
• Using paradox
• as her subtle
• sorcerer
• I made and bound my first two copies of '50% The Visible Woman' myself, they had real python skin on the covers. I had discovered surrealism and the collage books of Max Ernst. I wanted to make a surrealist statement, from a woman's point of voice. Each image and its poem represents a psycho-mythic confrontation, usually about the nature of how woman is seen and how she sees herself.
• • "I used to draw, but as everything I do consists of bringing together pieces of reality and making a third thing, collage seemed more immediate…. For me being a woman and making things about sexuality seems relevant. It's saying I'm not this sexual object or if I am then I choose to be!" From interview in Image Magazine, 1973.
  • Rolling Stone writes: "This book will become as important on your bookshelf as Sgt. Pepper is on your record rack… 50% The Visible Woman is a personification of everyone's introspection, in a genre that until this time has been reserved for painting and film. Truly a landmark accomplishment in the blending of different art forms."
  • "There is a difference between that which is sexist, and that which is erotic. The latter kind of images need oppress no one, but in our own culture no examples of dynamic progressive eroticism have yet emerged (except perhaps in the work of Penelope Slinger, who is, significantly, a woman)" Peter Fuller, Commentary.
  • "The book as a whole constitutes a challenge both to the repressive society whose essence it reveals and to woman themselves. It is a revelation of how little, female phantasy has been explored and how its importance does not lie simply in an up-beat positive discovery of a hidden, better self. Penny Slinger shows that the necessary process of facing feminine sexuality head on is not easy." Laura Mulvey, Spare Rib Magazine.