Rosemary Laing is an artist whose work has been primarily photographic, but who has also worked in painting, performance and video. Her work examines the language and history of the tradition of landscape imagery, deploying sometimes surreal or politically charged elements in her large scale photographic prints, such as Flying Research (late 90s onwards), which depicted women in bridal gowns as if flying against a blue sky, and Welcome to Australia (2004), which were images of barbed-wire surrounded desert detention centres.
Born in Brisbane in 1959, Laing received a Diploma of Art Education, Brisbane College of Advanced Education in 1979. In 1982, she was awarded a Diploma of Art from the Tasmanian School of Art in Hobart, and in 1991 a Post Graduate Diploma from Sydney College of the Arts, University of Sydney. In 1996 Laing received her Master of Fine Arts from the College of Fine Arts, University of New South Wales, Sydney. Laing has been involved in dozens of group shows begining with Detours by Tender Aliens at the Long Gallery in Hobart, 1982. Her solo exhibiting career commenced in 1978 with Views and Influences at Queensland University, Brisbane.
leak, Tolarno Galleries, Melbourne, Australia 2011.
a dozen useless actions for grieving blondes, Galerie Conrads, Düsseldorf, Germany, 2010.
prostrate your horses: weather and then some, University of Queensland Art Museum, Brisbane; a dozen useless actions for grieving blondes, Galerie Lelong, New York, USA; a dozen useless actions for grieving blondes, Tolarno Galleries, Melbourne, 2009.
to walk on a sea of salt, Contemporary Art Centre of South Australia, Adelaide, South Australia, 2008.
weather, Filiale, Berlin, Germany; flight, Frist Center for the Visual Arts, Nashville, USA; weather, Galerie Lelong, New York, USA; weather, Tolarno Galleries, Melbourne, 2007.
weather, Galerie Conrads, Düsseldorf, Germany, 2006.
to walk on a sea of salt, Tolarno Galleries, Melbourne; Rosemary Laing: groundspeed, Galerie Conrads, Düsseldorf, Germany; the unquiet landscapes of Rosemary Laing, Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney — travelled to Kunsthallen Brandts Klaedefabrik, Odense, Denmark (2006); one dozen unnatural disasters in the Australian landscape: a collaboration with Stephen Birch, GrantPirrie Gallery, Sydney, 2005.
Rosemary Laing, Domus Artium 2002, Salamanca, Spain; one dozen unnatural disasters in the Australian landscape, Galerie Conrads, Düsseldorf, Germany; one dozen unnatural disasters in the Australian landscape, Galerie Lelong, New York, USA, 2004.
one dozen unnatural disasters in the Australian landscape, Gitte Weise Gallery, Sydney; Rosemary Laing: A Survey 1995–2002, Brisbane City Gallery, Brisbane; bulletproofglass, Galerie Conrads, Düsseldorf, Germany, 2003.
bulletproofglass, Galerie Lelong, New York, USA; bulletproofglass, Gitte Weise Gallery, Sydney, 2002.
groundspeed, Gitte Weise Gallery, Sydney, 2001.
gradience, Australian Centre for Photography, Sydney; flight research, Gitte Weise Gallery, Sydney, 2000.
aero-zone, National Museum of Art, Osaka, Japan — travelled to Australian Centre for Contemporary Art, Melbourne, Perth Institute of Contemporary Art, Perth (2000), 1999.
brownwork, Annandale Galleries, Sydney 1997; brownwork (within Envisioned), Monash University Gallery, Melbourne, 1998.
greenwork, International Terminal, Sydney (Kingsford Smith) Airport, Federal Airports Corporation, Sydney; greenwork, Annandale Gallery, Sydney, 1995.
blow-out, Annandale Gallery, Sydney 1992; from Paradise work (works 1-6), Queensland Art Gallery, Brisbane, 1993.
from Paradise work (works 1-4), Experimental Art Foundation, Adelaide; from Paradise work (works 1-4), 200 Gertrude Street, Melbourne, 1991.
from Paradise work (work 3), First Draft West, Sydney; from Paradise work (work 1), Photospace Gallery, Canberra Institute for the Arts, Canberra, 1990.
Natural Disasters, Milburn + Arte Gallery, Brisbane, 1989.
Natural Disasters, Artspace, Sydney, 1988.
A Real Person, Avago, Sydney University, Sydney; Speaking from the Silence, First Draft, Sydney; Petits Sciseaux, Painters Gallery, Sydney, 1987.
A Portrait of Rationality, Avago, Sydney; Table Suite, Performance Space Gallery, Sydney, 1986.
Table Suite, Chameleon Gallery, Hobart, 1985.
Two Women, La Boite, Brisbane, 1979.
Views and Influences, Queensland University, Brisbane, 1978.
Stormy Weather: Contemporary Landscape Photography, National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne; Timelines: Photography and Time, National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne; Be a Star, Play a Model, Cultural Institution, Knokke, Belgium; Reference and Affinity: Art of the 21st Century from the Collection, Kunstmuseum Luzern, Lucerne, Switzerland, 2010.
Almanac: The Gift of Ann Lewis AO, Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney; Clouds....over there....marvellous clouds! Around Eugene Boudin’s studies of the sky: tributes and digressions, Musee Malraux, Le Harve, France, and Queensland Art, Pestorius Sweeney House, Hamilton, Brisbane; Varios Artistas: Tiempo Suspendido, Domus Artium 2002 Salamanca, Salamanca, Spain; The Edge of Reason: Australian Women Photographers, Bendigo Art Gallery, Bendigo; Light Sensitive Material: Works from the Verghis Collection, Bathurst Regional Art Gallery, Bathurst; Manipulating Reality: How Images Redefine the World, Centro di Cultura Contemporanea Strozzina, Palazzo Strozzi, Florence, Italy; Curating the COFA Collection, Ivan Dougherty Gallery, Sydney; Collecting Lines: Selected Works from the Geoff and Vicki Ainsworth Collection, Maitland Regional Art Gallery, Maitland; Reframing Darwin: Evolution and Art in Australia, Ian Potter Museum of Art, University of Melbourne, Melbourne; Silence, Kunstmuseum Luzern, Lucerne, Switzerland; Other Worlds, Confederation Centre Art Gallery, Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island, Canada; Remote Proximity: >Nature< In Contemporary Art, Kunst Museum Bonn, Bonn, Germany; Trouble in Paradise: Examining Discord Between Nature and Society, Tucson Museum of Art, Tucson, USA, 2009.
Primary Views, Monash University Museum of Art, Melbourne; New: selected recent acquisitions 2007–2008, University of Queensland Art Museum, Queensland; Surreale, Mimmo Scognamiglio Artecontemporanea, Milan, Italy; neo goth: back in black, University of Queensland Art Museum, Queensland; Holding on, letting go, Monash Gallery of Art, Victoria; Revolutions: Forms That Turn, 16th Biennale of Sydney, Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney; FX in Contemporary Photography, McClelland Gallery and Sculpture Park, Langwarrin, Victoria; Depth of field: contemporary photography from the Collection, University of Queensland Art Museum, Queensland, 2008.
Garden of Eden — The Garden in Art Since 1900, Kunsthalle Emden, Emden, Germany; Lives and Times: a selection of works from the Victorian Foundation for Living Australian Artists, National Gallery of Victoria — travelled to Regional Australian Galleries (2007/08); Janus: Photography’s Double Face, Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, Madrid, Spain; Think with the Senses — Feel with the Mind: Art in the Present Tense, 52nd International Art Exhibition, Venice Biennale; New Nature, Govett-Brewster Art Gallery, New Plymouth, New Zealand; June Bride, Yossi Milo Gallery, New York; Grey Water, Institute Modern Art, Brisbane; The BIG Picture, North Carolina Museum of Art, USA, 2007.
Prism: Contemporary Australian Art, Bridgestone Museum of Art, Tokyo, Japan; Art, Life and Confusion, 47th October Salon, Belgrade, Serbia; Scary Tales, Filiale, Berlin, Germany; Dresscode, Historisches + Völkerkundemuseum, St Gallen, Switzerland; The Genius of Place, Museum of Western Virginia, Raonoke, Virginia, USA; Shifting Terrain: Contemporary Landscape Photography, Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford, CT, USA; Mite!, Okayama Prefectural Museum of Art, Okayama, Japan; Strange Cargo: Contemporary Art as a State of Encounter, Newcastle Region Art Gallery, Newcastle —travelled to Broken Hill, Bendigo, Orange, Wagga Wagga, Tweed River and Ipswich; Artbank: Celebrating 25 Years of Australian Art, Artbank, Sydney — travelled to Regional Australian Galleries; Decade Acquisitions 1996–2006, Bendigo art Gallery, Victoria, 2006.
The Forest: Politics, Poetics and Practice, Nasher Museum of Art, Duke University, Durham, NC, USA; Points of View: Australian Photography 1985–95, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney; Beyond Real. Part 2: Making A Scene, Australian Centre of Photography, Sydney; Time’s Arrow, Twelve Random Thoughts on Beauty, Rotunda Gallery BRIC, Brooklyn, NY, USA; a kind of magic: The Art of Transforming, Kunstmuseum Luzern, Lucerne, Switzerland; Points of View: Landscape and Photography, Galerie Lelong, New York, USA; Out There: Landscape in the New Millennium, Museum of Contemporary Art Cleveland (MOCA), Ohio, USA; Picturing the Landscape, Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu, Grosvenor Place Building, Sydney; Art Almanac: Cover Stories 269, Sir Hermann Black Gallery, University of Sydney, Sydney; After Nature, Lake Macquarie City Art Gallery, Lake Macquarie, New South Wales, 2005.
Revealing Secret Treasures: Women Artists from the Reg & Sally Richardson collection, Manning Regional Art Gallery, Taree — travelled to Coffs Harbour, Tamworth, Armidale, Maitland and Mosman; The Nature Machine: Contemporary Art, Nature and Technology, Queensland Art Gallery, Brisbane; Apparently Light, Galerie Nei Liicht, Dudelange, Luxembourg; Australian Culture Now, National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne; Adrift, Queensland Centre for Photography, Brisbane; Penumbra: Images of darkness and light, McClelland Gallery and Sculpture Park, Langwarrin, Victoria; Flock and Fable: Animals and Identity in Contemporary Art, Chelsea Art Museum, New York, USA; Busan Biennale, Busan Metropolitan Art Museum, Busan, Korea; More Easily Imagined, Crossings of the Blue Mountains, Bathurst Regional Art Gallery, Bathurst; Breathtaking, Art Institute of Boston Gallery, Lesley University, Boston, USA; Arquitecturas Urbanas, Centro Municipal de las Artes de Alcorcón, Madrid, and Centro Nacional de Fotografía Torrelavega, Santander, Spain; Landscape & Memory, La Casa Encendida, Madrid, Spain; Rendezvous mit Gitt volume 4, Gitte Weise Gallery, Sydney; Living together is easy, Art Tower Mito, Tokyo, Japan — travelled to National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne; Adelaide Biennial of Australian Art: Contemporary Photomedia, Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide, 2004.
Defying Gravity: Contemporary Art and Flight, North Carolina Museum of Art, Raleigh, NC, USA; The Fleeting Moment Between Photography And Cinema, Pinacoteca Giovanni e Marella Agnelli, Turin and Museo Nazionale del Cinema of Turin, Turin, Italy; Face Up: Contemporary Art from Australia, Nationalgalerie im Hamburger Bahnhof, Museum for the Present, Berlin, Germany; Hothouse — The flower in contemporary art, Monash University Museum of Art, Melbourne — travelled to State Library of Victoria, Ballarat Fine Art Gallery, McCelland Gallery and Sculpture Park, Langwarrin, Victoria, Geelong Art Gallery, National Library of Australia, Canberra, Gippsland Art Gallery, Victoria, Keith Murdoch Gallery, Melbourne; Nature and Nation: Vaster than Empires, Hastings Museum and Art Gallery, Hastings, UK — travelled to Worcester City Museum and Art Gallery, Worcester, UK, Yard Gallery, Wollaton Park, Nottingham, UK, Lethaby Gallery, Central Saint Martin’s College of Art and Design, London, UK; As Heavy as Heaven: Transformations of Gravity, Kunsthallen Brandts Klædefabrik, Odense, Denmark — travelled to Landesmuseum Joanneum und Grazer Altstadt, Graz, Austria; Rendezvous mit Gitte volume 3, Gitte Weise Gallery, Sydney; Picturing Paradise, Mori Gallery, Sydney, 2003.
The Year in Art, S.H.Ervin Gallery, Sydney; out of the dark, Adelaide Perry Gallery, Presbyterian Ladies College, Sydney; A Silver Lining and A New Beginning, Ivan Dougherty Gallery, Sydney; Tales of the Unexpected, National Gallery of Australia, Canberra; 10th Anniversary Exhibition, Gitte Weise Gallery, Sydney; Faux / Real, Borusan Art Gallery, Istanbul, Turkey; Gold Coast Ulrick Schubert Photographic Art Award, Gold Coast City Art Gallery, Gold Coast, Queensland, 2002.
