weather #12, 2006
Type C photograph, 6 from an edition of 8
110 x 182 cm – image; 127.2 x 199 cm – frame
Provenance
Galerie Lelong & Co, New York, United States of America
Acquired from the above in July 2008
Exhibited
another from the edition was exhibited in
weather, Galerie Conrads, Düsseldorf, Germany; Filiale, Berlin, Germany; Galerie Lelong & Co., New York, New York; Tolarno Galleries, Melbourne, Australia, 2006
prostrate your horses: weather and then some, Rosemary Laing at the University of Queensland Art Museum, Brisbane, 25 September – 15 November 2009
Literature
A. Solomon-Godeau, Rosemary Laing, Piper Press, Sydney, 2012, illus. pp. 148
N MItzevich & M Helmrich, prostrate your horses: weather and then some, Rosemary Laing at the University of Queensland Art Museum, Brisbane, 2009, illus. front cover and p.29.
Of the whole series weather, Michelle Helmrich writes "For the most part, the works are executed in a grey palette. A woman appears tossed in a confetti-like spray of newspaper fragments. She occupies a 'no place', a place without geographic feature, a void. Sometimes the figure is assaulted by a deluge of paper fragments, sometimes lightly so, and in one image she is in near darkness. Sequenced across a wall, the sense of dynamism reverberates across space, the figure appearing to somersault and flip from image to image. The artist accentuates their choreography by her attention not only to pose and movement, but also to tonality and chromatic range. We barely catch the words on the paper fragments, their spray more like shrill static. We view a woman who is buffeted by the forces pitched against her and who is unequal to them.
As the artist writes, "This vortex of influence - ambiguously either climatic or events, disables the performer from exerting individual agency. She appears as if her physical actions are now authored by these external forces"....
The weather series was produced at a time when global warming was catching the world headlines. Authorities argued the link between extreme weather events and global warming and issued warnings of dire consequences, be they rising sea levels or increasingly devastating bush fires, cyclones, tornadoes and floods. But beyond the storms that raged on land and sea, storms also raged in the political sphere....
While far too literal to ascribe such global crises to the 'meaning' of Laing's weather series, it is perhaps not too long a bow to suggest that these debates can inform, at least in part, our understanding of these works. (Michelle Helmrich, 'Inclement weather: Rosemary Laing and the performing of disaster', in Michelle Helmrich & Nick Mitzevich, prostrate your horses: weather and then some, Rosemary Laing at the University of Queensland Art Museum, Brisbane, 2009, p.16-17)
Image courtesy of the Estate of the artist and Tolarno Galleries, Melbourne