Vrije Academie | Robert Slingsby

Come with me.

I’ll take you on a journey with Robert Slingsby,

through the twists and turns of his art career,

into his art, into his obsession with the Richtersveld,

the rock art, the Nama people, their future, his future,

to the place where Robert's art & the rock art cohabit,

a place of profound pleasure and pain, a place which found him

inadvertently caught in crossfire with a target on his back.

Historical blind spot Part I | From the Vrije (Art) Academie to the Richtersveld Rock Art

Outsider’s lens exposing Apartheid’s historical blind spot

Where self-interest privilege & power is prioritised over stewardship

Slingsby’s decision to study at the Vrije Academie placed him outside the cultural and academic norms of apartheid-era South Africa. While this choice reflected a profound moral stance, it also left him exposed to a unique brand of academic hostility. This hostility didn’t arise solely from his outsider status; it came from a deeper discomfort among those who remained within the South African system, those who have since entrenched themselves in positions of unassailable authority.

In the Richtersveld, this culture of unchecked authority has had even graver consequences. The neglect and destruction of the region’s rock art, some of humanity’s oldest and most fragile cultural legacies, are the direct results of this systemic failure. The very academics entrusted with protecting such heritage have prioritized self-interest over stewardship, their positions of influence insulating them from accountability. Slingsby’s experience becomes a microcosm of this broader issue: the perpetuation of injustice by those who claim the mantle of intellectual and moral authority.

Rubbish dump on top of Richtersveld rock art

Richtersveld rock art site, now a rubbish dump.

Vrije Academie, Den Haag, Holland

Slingsby rejects Apartheid education's white privilege

The Vrije Academie in The Hague was more than an art school.

In the latter half of the 20th century, it was a crucible for innovation,

a space defying conventions, embracing emerging art forms,

and cultivating a generation of boundary-pushing artists.

In a liberal Holland of the 70s and 80s, where societal boundaries blurred, when prostitutes publicly peddled their wares and

heroin addicts were supplied needles and syringe,

the Vrije Academie stood at the forefront of contemporary art education.

Slingsby in his Den Haag studio 1978

For Slingsby, this bastion of artistic freedom offered an escape from Apartheid’s morally bankrupt educational system which loomed as an injustice he could neither ignore nor accept. The Soweto Uprising of 1976 was a searing indictment of the inequities of institutionalised racism, pervasive of all Apartheid education. It would have been an anathema for Slingsby to benefit from white privilege while the majority suffered. His rejected these privileges and enrolled at the Vrije Academie, where he would self-fund throughout his five year study sojourn by exhibiting and selling art.

Under the anti-authoritarian ethos of George Lampe, Slingsby spent five magical years at the Vrije Akademie, in Holland, immersed in the culture feast and freedoms of Europe. The traditional Dutch training was contrasted with the counterculture of the time; a mix of revolutionary politics, Carlos Castaneda writings, punks, sex, drugs and rock ‘n roll. For the curious and creative in nature, it opened minds and possibilities.

Holland was recognised as a fiercely anti-apartheid country and The Vrije Academie endorsed vigorous political awareness, aligning Slingsby's art and ethics. By age 23, Slingsby had 24 exhibitions in Holland and was recognized among the top ten Dutch fijnschilders (fine painters), exhibiting socio-political art like Whites Only.

But, home is where the heart is. In 1981, Slingsby returned to South Africa.

Whites only 1977 Oil on canvas | Painted in Den Haag

The magnetic Richtersveld Desert | Petroglyphs | People

A mirror into Slingsby's soul

Richtersveld dolomite pavement with petroglyphs

Slingsby wanted to get back to the Africa literally under his feet, to a powerful place, the Richtersveld, a desert landscape, first encountered as a child, which gripped his imagination ever since. From the lines of the glyphs which parallel his art making, to the harshness of place and abandonment of the people, it’s like a mirror into his sole, compelling him to reconnect with the land, its ancient history and people.

The Richtersveld petroglyphs, etched into black dolomite pavements over millennia, became his focus. He started to record the Richtersveld petroglyphs from the outset, back up a long straight road, in an utterly unfit for desert purpose car, borrowed camera, the strength required to endure it and little else.

The Richtersveld is not a place that welcomes human presence, it challenges it. This ancient desert, with its blistering dolomite pavements and shadowless gulleys, demands reverence and exacts a toll. To record the timeless petroglyphs scattered across the stone, is to embrace discomfort, to court danger. There is no shelter from the furnace of the sun, no lifeline of communication, no safety net should things go wrong. Yet, over countless self-funded journeys, Slingsby returns, compelled by a vision larger than comfort or safety. Each step is a negotiation with the land, each discovery a fleeting connection to the ancestors who carved their stories here. It is not just a test of endurance but a dialogue with time, a courageous act of preservation where only the truly determined dare tread.

Slingsby began documenting these ancient glyphs, symbols of a culture threatened by mining, farming, vandalism, and neglect, his activism grounded in the richness of African traditions. In 1987, his art abruptly shifted from figurative works to an exploration of these ancient lines, leading to his groundbreaking 1989 Goodman Gallery exhibition, Trance Images of the Richtersveld.

Trance Images of the Richtersveld, Goodman Gallery

Groundbreaking use of non-figurative petroglyphs in his art

South African rock art, with the ubiquitous rock paintings featuring eland to spear carrying bushman engrained and commodified into the South African psyche, adorn everything from fine art to coffee cups.

What Slingsby did was groundbreaking. He brought the rock art from the Richtersveld, largely unknown to the public and lacking in academic discourse, into his art, with his 1989 Goodman Gallery exhibition Trance images of the Richtersveld. Unlike the painted rock art, the non-figurative petroglyphs, introduced South Africans to a deeper, more abstract visual language. And significantly, this represented ancient art, as new material, shared in an art gallery and out in the public domain.

His process was reverential, not appropriative, painstakingly recreating the glyphs dot-for-dot, set against a backdrop of his visual understanding of an altered state of consciousness. He lived and breathed petroglyphs, meticulously observing the mystery of the exceptional lines made by the ancient artists, with his maxim “they (the lines) always avoid the obvious”.

Metamorphosis 1989 Oil on canvas

Lewis-Williams opens Slingsby's Goodman show

Trance images of the Richtersveld

Mutual respect between academic and artist

Dutch trained in technique, but groomed to have an open and intuitive mind, Slingsby explored not only the wealth of academic literature on rock art, but the abundance of alternate perspectives flowing on altered states of consciousness, offering possible explanations for the glyphs. While most of academic archaeology clung to limiting narratives to explain rock art, the late 80’s marked University of Witwatersrand Professor David Lewis- Williams and Thomas Dowson publish their revolutionary hypothesis linking rock art to altered states of consciousness.

Crucially, Slingsby’s work aligned with Lewis-William's burgeoning academic theory. It was fitting then, that Lewis-Williams opened the exhibition, his first-ever art show, as a gesture of mutual respect between artist and academic. For Slingsby, his validation bridged the gap between intuitive explorations and scholarly rigour, as well as artist and academic.

Trance Images of the Richtersveld, two years in the making, featured paintings, bronze and stone sculptures, bringing previously unseen petroglyph material to light, underscoring the urgency to preserve these ancient marks.

The groundbreaking nature of the exhibition was elevated, when two months later, Lewis-Williams, Thomas Dowson and two further archaeologists, accompanied Slingsby to the Richtersveld where he was able to show them over three blazing hot January days the most spectacular non-figurative petroglyphs in the least amount of time.

Richtersveld petroglyph site

An historical document

Unlike South African cave rock art sites, the sheer scale of the spread of the petroglyphs onto the black dolomitic rock, makes the location so compelling and so complex. Today, the Richtersveld petroglyphs face growing threats. Mining, agriculture, and neglect steadily erode their legacy. Heritage assessments, often mired in conflicting interests, fail to prioritise these irreplaceable treasures.

This neglect reflects a bitter irony: a site that stands as South Africa’s most expansive historical book, with the Gariep River as spine, where for millennia, autochthonic man dwelt along the riverbanks, is now being steadily destroyed. Its pages, the pavements of black dolomite rock, the text, the petroglyphs engraved by ancient hands, tell a story of humanity deeply intertwined with the environment. From ancient glyphs, smoothed and darkened with time, along the way, Nama tell the story of traditions embracing altered states of consciousness, to the arrival of the colonisers and the conflicts, till the ‘poetry’ of present day graffiti. It's as much an historical document, as it is a rock art site, with no parallel elsewhere in South Africa spanning type and time.

Yet this living record, a cultural legacy, is seemingly dismissed as expendable.

The Goodman Gallery exhibition was not an act of artistic imperialism but one of reverence. Slingsby’s work honoured a culture all but obliterated by colonization, displacement and neglect; an act of reverence for a landscape and its timeless stories, a book we must preserve before it is lost forever. Slingsby’s knowledge and archive of the Richtersveld petroglyphs remains unmatched, a precious record of a cultural heritage we cannot afford to lose.

Robert Slingsby with Richtersveld petroglyph

Forthcoming essays

Future essays will address attempts by academics to undermine Slingsby’s contributions through omissions and distortions. Framed as critique, it carried the marks of an academic mugging, an attack cloaked in the guise of scholarly analysis, weaponized to dismiss Slingsby’s work and elevate the editor’s agenda. Such actions reveal the darker undercurrents of South African academia, where power has too often been wielded with impunity, silencing voices and distorting narratives.

But for now, let us remember that his quest began not as a battle against rivals but on a spectacular rock art site which has become a rubbish dump. It is Slingsby's quest to find out who is accountable, why and how, it happened, as an act of reverence for a landscape and its timeless stories, a book we must preserve before it is lost forever.

Rubbish dump on top of petroglyph rock art site