Galerie Lelong & Co., New York, is honored to present a tribute exhibition to Australian artist Rosemary Laing (b. 1959 – d. 2024). In 2002, we presented her first solo exhibition in the United States, bulletproofglass, which inaugurated a close relationship that would lead to solo exhibitions one dozen unnatural disasters in the Australian landscape (2004), weather (2007), a dozen uesless actions for grieving blondes (2009), leak (2012) and The Paper (2014). In a career spanning over four decades, Laing created photo-based works that are cinematic in vision and large in scale and scope. Instead of using digital manipulation, Laing photographed real-time performance and physical installations, meticulously staging scenes that interrogate the socio-cultural issues of her native Australia and in the process echo a global awareness of climate change, indigenous rights, and migration. Her work demonstrates not only her distinct and rigorous artistic vision, but also her keen understanding of the issues facing both society and the environment. Writing in the artist’s definitive monograph, rosemary laing, published by Prestel in 2012, art historian Abigail Solomon-Godeau noted that Laing’s “artwork is not only of the highest quality, but her ethical and political convictions and ideas are a model of what it means to be a ‘responsible’ image maker.”
Laing primarily worked in series, creating thematic bodies of work that accumulatively form a narrative of events that have impacted cultural consciousness. Most recently, Laing’s work was on view in the solo exhibition swansongs at Tolarno Galleries, Melbourne, Australia, from March 1 – April 6, 2024, which featured sculptural “shellworks” alongside photographs that featured a selection of these works; Laing described this body of work as being about “a love of, an attachment to, homeland or places of belonging…all the memories and histories that have stemmed from that place, and the making of a kind of ‘song’ that combines the enigma of this attachment with a sadness for what has happened in this place.” In Galerie Lelong & Co., New York’s special tribute presentation, works from some of Laing’s best-known series, many of which feature the vast landscape of Australia as a metaphor for cultural memory interrupted by Laing’s dramatic interventions, will be on view, showcasing the breadth of Laing’s artistic contributions as the gallery celebrates her life’s work.
