Reviews of Anthony as an Artist

Artist Reviews

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The Daily Telegraph 

SINCERITY AND WIT OF ARTIST

Terence Mullaly

Anthony Slinn is an artist whose sincerity is undoubted, whose seriousness of purpose is challenging and who displays wit.

The first two are in reality the sine qua non of worthwhile art, although in an age that pauses with respect for the “happening”, they are too often lacking in artistic performances that none the less win acclaim.

Wit is different.  At; any time it is rare.  What is doubly striking about Slinn’s work is that he displays wit in a form drawing upon contemporary conventions, yet as it must to be deserving of the name wit, going beyond them.

All this is emphasized by the setting of his London one-man show.

The atmosphere is informal and the space airy.  All those factors that make most galleries in some degree intimidating and artificial are lacking.

Anthony Slinn is preoccupied with the world in which we live.

What is refreshing is the form taken by his concern.  He is no mere observer.

Evidently fascinated by the work of certain contemporary artists who have contributed images today widely familiar he produces pastiches of their work.

There is a wall, it greets the visitor, full of paintings in the manner of Keith Vaughan, and one of the six large panels of his “Nineteen Seventy” is devoted to Bacon.

The points made by Slinn are far from arrogant.  For instance, he writes across the Bacon pastiche “it’s a pity you can’t mimic the paint quality with these stupid dots.”

I hope that here is a talent that will develop.  I should like to see less commentary, more of what Slinn himself has to say. 

Arts Review       top

Peter Fuller

Anthony Slinn’s most recent pictures, painted in a meticulous mock pointillist style, retain a patina of Pop, with a super-abundance of admass references and tickertape-type slogans which streak across the surface of the pictures.  But his concern seems to be with the establishment of a visual art critical dialectic, at once both personal and public, a witness’s testimony to the suffering of Bacon, Van Gogh, and Michelangelo.  Other walls are covered with a diversity of paintings and collages, which, though they impress by their versatility, lack the confidence of the last series.  Strange machines perpetually pump out mechanical music, from little magic boxes with huge ear-horns placed at strategic points on the gallery floor.  The impression one receives is of an eccentric inventor with a surrealist’s love of irrational coincidence, set free in the sleek, smooth world of the media consumer.  A very exciting showing. 

FINANCIAL TIMES     top

Marina Vaizey

Anthony Slinn is an amusing egoist in his work, plays with all styles, makes various visual and verbal puns and probably needs to settle down just a little; but his work is nothing if not ebullient.

The Guardian      top

Frederick Laws

The artist concerned is not making up to anybody.  In oils and gouache there are obsessionally religious works of total unorthodoxy from Anthony Slinn.