24/05/2024
Vale Rosemary Laing (1959-2024).
It is with great sadness to note the passing of internationally renowned photographer Rosemary Laing after a short illness.
Her photographs explored the cultural consciousness, researching the crucial issues of our times including the politics of place, natural environment and human rights.
The photograph featured is "welcome to Australia"
from the series "to walk on a sea of salt 2004" and as can be seen, her works were often cinematic, vast in scale and filled with disquiet and unsettling beauty.
This image depicts the Woomera Immigration Reception and Processing Centre, the official title of an infamous detention centre remotely located in the South Australian Simpson Desert that operated from 1999 to 2003 to incarcerate asylum seekers and refugees who arrived in Australia by boat without valid visas. The so-called ‘unauthorised arrivals’ held at Woomera, the majority of which were ultimately found to be legitimate refugees, were subjected to prolonged, indeterminate and cruel periods of detention until they were granted visas, or deported, under a punitive policy of ‘mandatory detention’.
A major survey of her work was held at Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney in 2005 and travelled to Kunsthallen Brandts Klædefabrik in Denmark in 2006, while Tarrawarra Museum of Art in Victoria presented a major survey in 2018. Her most recent solo exhibition in Melbourne earlier this year, entitled Swansongs, derived its name from the area in Swanhaven on the NSW coast where she has a home.
Rosemary was born in Brisbane and studied in Hobart, Brisbane and Sydney. Her work has been presented Biennales in Sydney, Venice, Busan and Istanbul. Her work is in major collections in Australia, Spain, the US, Japan and Switzerland.
