Rosemary Laing

One of Australia’s most prominent Australian contemporary artists, Rosemary Laing is a photographer with a painter’s eye. Her highly detailed, intentional compositions meditate upon humankind’s complicated relationship to the natural environment. The resulting images combine a sublime appreciation of the distinct Australian landscape with highly choreographed human interventions that she integrates within nature in what amounts, in essence, to a transient form of land art.

In 2017-18, Rosemary Laing (b. 1959) was the subject of a major survey of her work from the last three decades at the TarraWarra Museum of Art. In 2015, two of her photographic series – greenwork (1995) and brownwork (1996-97) – were shown in full in Rosemary Laing: transportation, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney. An earlier major survey, The Unquiet Landscapes of Rosemary Laing, was held at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney, in 2005, touring in 2006 to Kunsthallen Brandts Klaedefabrik, Odense, Denmark. She has participated in multiple biennials, including the Biennale of Sydney (2008); the Venice Biennale (2007); the Busan Biennale (2004); and the Istanbul Biennale (1995). Her work is held in numerous public and private collections in Australia and internationally including the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, Madrid; the North Carolina Museum of Art, Raleigh, USA; the Modern Art Museum of Forth Worth, USA; the 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa, Japan; the National Gallery of Australia, Canberra; the National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne; the Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney; the Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide; and the Queensland Art Gallery, Brisbane. A monograph on Laing’s work was published by Prestel, New York, in 2012, written by Abigail Solomon-Godeau.

Rosemary Laing is represented in Australia by Tolarno Galleries, Melbourne, and in the United States by Gallery Lelong, New York.