ROBERT SLINGSBY | The Archive of Unspoken Things

Robert Slingsby has journeyed deep into Africa’s interior landscapes, not only across vast geographies, but through layers of history, spirituality and creativity. Nowhere is this commitment more sustained than in the Richtersveld, where he has returned over five decades to document the region’s aesthetic, cultural and environmental shifts. His work does not simply reflect a place, it reflects time spent within it: a long engagement with communities, rituals and symbols that are part of a wider creative lineage. Through his fieldwork, Slingsby has built an archive grounded in the creative expressions of traditional African cultures, both ancient and contemporary.

Slingsby’s paintings are akin to visual field notes, evocative testaments to places where art is intrinsic to identity. His work tracks his experiential insights of people and places undergoing transformation due to the destabilising forces of the Anthropocene. In this way, we can see Slingsby’s practice as a contemplative yet deliberate act of witness, an intimate record reflecting the passage of time across various cultures, traditions and lifestyles.

The Archive of Unspoken Things therefore becomes more than a title; it is a methodology. It reflects the archive not as a static repository, but ever-growing, shaped and updated in real time through Slingsby’s sustained fieldwork, presence and shared experience. In the remote regions where Slingsby works, the power of being there, rooted in complete immersion, is the point where he can witness and share culture. Being there means more than observation; the unscripted and transformative encounters are the experiences that inspire Robert’s work.

The documentation is not the end; it becomes the wellspring from which the paintings emerge. His intricate lines are upwellings from within, creating maps, not of territory, but of vanishing worlds and the silent marks of human presence. Each work is a distillation, a temporal fragment drawn from a vast, disappearing whole. They form an archive of unspoken things: stories told without words, the beauties and beasts of ancestral landscapes in flux and the weight of what can only be learned face-to-face. This all-encompassing, life-long process of active witness results in a practice where painting and fieldwork are inseparable, where the canvas is not just composition; it carries encounter, knowledge and the quiet legacy of connection. The Archive of Unspoken Things is the record of that journey: of how archive becomes art and art becomes archive. Slingsby’s paintings trace his pursuit of Africa’s creative genius, encapsulate the depth and beauty of shared experiences, across time, through shifting, sacred landscapes and how his art is a living testimony to what endures.