Holly Slingsby (b. Oxford, 1983) is a visual artist based in Swansea, Wales. Through performance, video, costume and painting she seeks to give visible form to unseen and overlooked phenomena. These range from belief in invisible saints and deities to the experience of childlessness - and sometimes the combination of both.
Slingsby is fascinated with mysticism, scared spaces and ceremonies. She often work site-responsively, at locations including churches, gardens and ancient ruins. Her video practice allows her to transport viewers to these spaces and to emphasise particular qualities of the actions she performs in them. Her visual language reflects a fascination with iconography, drawing on biblical imagery, mythologies, and contemporary culture, with a particular emphasis on representations of women and the implications of those for society and self-image.
Much of Slingsby’s work explores her lived experience of infertility, creating a visual language for this through combinations of art historical imagery, medical material and ritualistic embodied action. She has recently examined parallels between these experiences and other forms of loss, such as iconoclasm and ecological breakdown. In the aftermath of grief, she is interested artmaking as a conduit for healing and transformation.
Slingsby studied at the Ruskin School of Drawing and Fine Art, Oxford University; and the Slade School of Art, London. Her work has been screened, performed and exhibited at MAC Birmingham; Space52, Athens; Chapter, Cardiff; Tate St Ives; Turner Contemporary, Margate; CCC Barcelona; LABS Bologna; Matt’s Gallery, London; Spike Island, Bristol; Modern Art Oxford; Freud Museum, London; Bòlit, Centre d'Art Contemporani, Girona; Tintype, London; DKUK, London; Art Licks Weekend; ICA, London; and the Barbican, London. In 2023 she was joint winner of the Exeter Contemporary Open.
For a full CV please click here.