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Come
Dancing
"Penny
Slinger's latest book An Exorcism is the ultimate expose…there
are few who attempt this strip tease of the psyche."
- Sheldon Williams, Art and Artists, 1977.
Here's a taste of some of the 99 images in 'An Exorcism',
I worked on the book over a number of years, took or
had taken, all the main photographs, and used the whole
process as an 'exorcism' of aspects of myself that made
me feel restricted. I took a large empty mansion house
as the setting, opening each door into a new area that
I needed to examine. The project began when I broke
up with Peter Whitehead and found it hard to process
all the feelings that I had about myself and my relationship
to the male and female archetypes. What were my own
neurosis, doubts and fears? What were mine and what
were a result of the projections of the group psyche?
An Exorcism is my unravelling, my journey of the death
and rebirth of the psyche. I thought if I dug deep enough,
I could come up with archetypal glyphs that could help
others look at the skeletons in their own closets and
find signposts out of the darkness.
"The
Slinger novel now in preparation is a cascade of photo-collage
imagery which has all the emergent trepidation of Herman
Hesse's 'Steppenwolf'." Art and Artists, 1973.
"The
lady has a fine attack, and her photo-collages can vibrate
with erotic impact…the English surrealists had turned
photo collage into a parlour game. Miss Slinger brings
back the menace, the stimulation." Oswell Blakeston,
Sunday Telegraph, 1977.
"Penny
herself plays a central part in the illustrations. "I
had to carve up my inhibitions. You need detachment
to make yourself into an image. I am no exhibitionist.
The world just doesn't apply. In my collages, I am not
myself - just a vehicle…I am really invisible, what
you see are the feelings…"' Penny Slinger, Art and Artists,
1973.
Peter Fuller says about one of the collages in 'An Exorcism'
Connoisseur magazine 1974, "If we look at the collage
carefully enough, we never look at a painting of a female
nude in the same way again."
"The kernel of this work remains a statement about women's
sexuality. The theme may be found, for example, in some
Indian sculpture - but has usually been rigorously excluded
in the European tradition. Slinger had the exceptional
courage to introduce it, using herself as both artist
and object, refusing to stop until she had seen and
revealed herself as she was, and not just as she was
required to appear." Peter Fuller, Connoisseur.
"The
exorcism in which Penelope Slinger found it necessary
to embark came about entirely of her own choice…But
simultaneously in doing so she was entering with 'mystical
participation' into a drama of the widest generality.
Instinctively the primitive psyche has provided Penelope
Slinger with a brilliant means of expressing her drama.
Highly charged both with the circumstances of her dreams
and her daily life, she unfolds the myth born from her
own experience, the anatomy of her psyche, closely entwined
into primordial images." Sir Roland Penrose, Introduction
to Book.
"One cannot deny the skill of the artist and the images
linger in the memory long after the book has been set
aside, this is visual storytelling at its best." The
Artist, 1978, review by Jack Yates.
"Readers
can take it as romantic detective story, composite myth
or as a model for self-analysis." Sheila Hayle, Harpers
and Queen, 1977.
Images
from 'An Exorcism' reproduced in:
'Photomontage' by Dawn Ades, Thames and Hudson.
'Photography Year Book' 1979, Fountain Press, England.
'How Does it Feel' Mick Csaky, 1979 Harmony Books NY,
Omni Magazine.
To purchase your limited edition copy of 'An Exorcism',
click here
www.goddesschannel.com/store
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