Penny Slinger

Penny Slinger, sometimes Penelope Slinger, is a British-born American artist and author based in California.

As an artist, she has worked in different mediums, including photography, film and sculpture.

Her work has been described as being in the genres of surrealism and feminist surrealism.

Her work explores the nature of the self, the feminine and the erotic.

Slinger focused on surrealism in the 1960s and the 1970s to "Plumb the depths of the feminine psyche and subconscious," according to a review in ArtDaily magazine.

She wrote and illustrated numerous publications.

She staged photographs, sometimes using her own body, to create "hauntingly surreal collages" for a series which she titled An Exorcism.

She photographed herself naked to explore ideas relating to dreams, desire, sex, female liberation, surrealism and memory.

Some of her art focused on the Arawak peoples of South America and the Caribbean.

Reviewer Kate Kellaway in The Guardian described her work as a "grotesque and militant contribution" with a "loud message about silence."

As an author, with Nik Douglas, her book Sexual Secrets sold 100,000 copies, and sold over a million copies in 19 translations.

Slinger attended Farnham (now West Surrey) College of Art from 1964 to 1966.

She completed her degree with a First Class Honors Diploma in Art and Design in 1969.

She was accepted into the Royal College of Art Film post graduate course, but did not take it up.

While writing her thesis on the collage books of Max Ernst, she met Sir Roland Penrose who became her patron for many years and introduced her to Max Ernst.

Penrose brought Slinger's art to the attention of Mario Amaya, who included her sculpture in the exhibition Young and Fantastic at the Institute of Contemporary Art in 1969.

Slinger worked in photographic collage, producing her first book 50% The Visible Woman. Published in 1969, the book continued her practice, started in her student days, of using herself as a muse and consists of a photo collage overlaid with her poetry.

In 1970 Slinger and filmmaker Peter Whitehead filmed and photographed at Lilford Hall, a decaying mansion in Northamptonshire, England.

Although their film project remained unrealized, the photos formed the basis of Slinger's surreal journey of self-discovery told in the style of a photo romance.

It was the only British feature film to be directed by a woman in the 1970s.

Slinger had a major performing role and co art directed the movie.

The British Film Institute DVD booklet for the film said, "The Other Side of the Underneath isn’t a work to love. It is a work to admire, to puzzle through and to wrestle with."

In the same year Slinger opened her second solo exhibition at Angela Flowers gallery, Opening.

The invitation depicted her as a wedding cake, the exhibits consisted of a series of table tops and mouthpieces, as well as the Bride’s Cake photo series.

The exhibition's themes of food and female eroticism can be seen in subsequent Feminist art.

Laura Mulvey stated in Spare Rib, '"Is there feminine phantasy?...Penny Slinger's recent exhibition provided graphic images of phantasy that only a woman could have produced', 'Opening showed us how powerfully a woman is able to transform Surrealism."

When published in 1971, Rolling Stone said, '"This book will become as important on your bookshelf as Sgt. Pepper is on your record rack."

In 1971 Slinger had her first solo exhibition at Angela Flowers Gallery, London, featuring assemblages of lifecasts of her head and transformed dolls.

Art critic Peter Fuller, '"Penny Slinger's work is a documentation of the role of one woman in a world still dominated by concepts of male superiority....she emerges as one of the most active and socially relevant artists around."

In 1971 Slinger joined the first British all women theater troupe, Holocaust, directed by Jane Arden because she said she wanted to contribute her talents to something bigger than herself, and the intentions of the group felt in alignment with her own resolve to delve deeply into and express the unearthed realms of the feminine psyche.

They performed A New Communion for Freaks, Prophets and Witches at the Open Space Theater London and at the Edinburgh Festival in 1971.

Slinger created masks for the surrealist play Lying Figures by Francis Warner, premiered at Edinburgh Festival 1971.

She was design collaborator with Carolee Schneemann on The Four Little Girls by Pablo Picasso, at the Open Space Theater London, 1971.

In 1972 Slinger participated in the controversial cult classic, The Other Side of the Underneath, directed by Jane Arden and shot on location in Wales.

The result, An Exorcism, was published in 1977 with a grant from Roland Penrose and Lee Miller's Elephant Trust.

In 1977 she published "The Secret Dakini Oracle", a deck of cards for divination.

With Douglas and Bhaskar Bhattacharya, she wrote The Path of the Mystic Lover - Baul Songs of Passion and Ecstasy in 1993, and provided 84 drawings for it.

Slinger's work was part of the Angels of Anarchy exhibit at the Manchester Art Gallery in 2009.

The Lilford Hall footage also resurfaced and was shown at Blum and Poe Gallery, Los Angeles 2014, as part of History Is Now at the Haywood Gallery, 2015, and at Anthology Film Archives, and Fortnight Institute, New York, 2019.

She studied at the Chelsea College of Arts in London where she made a series of short films that were later shown at Anthology Film Archives in 2019.