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Indepth Arts News:
"Robert Slingsby: Bones of the Rusting Carpet"
2006-03-28 until 2006-06-24
Square 1 Gallery
London, ,
UK United Kingdom
Robert Slingsby has been dealing with discarded objects in his art for a long time. In this exhibition he explores and finds artists expression for the human condition that is represented in a discarded people - The Nama people. They live in the territory whose rock art he has researched for three decades and continue to find an outlet of focus in his art. How they have evolved and what they represent in terms of being recognized as the most marginalized group in Southern Africa, has found voice through focusing on their dwellings.
In a landscape that is dominated by metal, there are parts where instead of litter being characterised by the almost jewel like quality of bright, amorphous coloured pieces of plastic, here it becomes a carpet of rust. But just as he as always found treasures in discarded objects whether they be ancient middens with stone artifacts or ostrich-eggshell beads, to the brightly coloured junk of table bay, so the Richtersveld, home of the Nama, has revealed its “bones”to pick on - tin-can-toys, enameled mugs and even a money box. These rusted treasures become both the visual and tangible structure of the art.
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