after Heysen, 2004 from the series 'to walk on a sea of salt'
Type C photograph, 1 from an edition of 7
110.0
x 252.0
cm
signed and inscribed 'Rosemary Laing/After Heysen/1/7 large 2004' (on the reverse and as noted by vendor but not seen)
SOLD
Provenance
Tolarno Galleries, Melbourne
Acquired from the above by Dr Colin & Elizabeth Laverty in March 2005
Exhibited
The unquiet landscapes of Rosemary Laing, Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney, 25 March-5 June 2005; Kunsthallen Brandts, Odense, Denmark, 19 May-3 September 2006 (this ed.)
Rosemary Laing: to walk on a sea of salt, Contemporary Art Centre of South Australia, Adelaide, 27 February-6 April 2008 (this ed.)
Literature
V Webb, The unquiet landscapes of Rosemary Laing, Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney, 2005, exh. cat., illus. p. 67 & p. 73
A. Solomon-Godeau, Rosemary Laing, Piper Press, Sydney, 2012, illus. p. 137
B French & D Palmer, Twelve Australian Photo Artists, Piper Press, Sydney, 2009, illus. p. 103
after Heysen is an image derived – in title and in composition – from Summer, 1909, a watercolour by German-Australian artist Sir Hans Heysen that won the 1909 Wynne Prize. The aged, imposing gum tree on the right, naturally stripped of some of its bark, leads the eye across a desiccated riverbed into the heat-scorched bush. Unusually for Laing, the work does not include any overt signs of human activity. The implication, perhaps, is that – much like Heysen or any traditional landscape painting – the very role of the artist as an observer and chronicler of nature is itself an act of intervention wherein the ephemeral quality of nature, light and time can all be distilled into a fixed image.
Image courtesy of the artist and Tolarno Galleries, Melbourne