"weather" in the new series of large scale colour photographs by the Australian artist Rosemary Laing is an analogy which links the effects of climate, and climate change, on landscape and human being with the effects of political and social 'climates'.

On a formal level the series "weather" is a synthesis of the elements that have formed Laing's artistic practice, bringing together the performative, documentary and object intervention strands. The first part with 6 motifs was completed in august 2006. Weather #5, (c-print, 124 x 168,5 cm, ed. 8) shows an isolated female figure against a bluish skylike background. She is caught mid air in a maelstrom of wind. Buffeted by the elements she seems to be moving through time as much as through space. This image is one from the component of performative photographs in which Laing has staged the effects of extreme weather conditions upon a performer. These images provide a poetic counterpoint to the landscape photographs, as the human presence is made palpable, but it is one that is suspended in a vortex of influence (climatic or events) over which she cannot exert individual agency.

These photographes continue Laing's interest in physics and movement as both physical fact and symbolic metaphor. As with Laing's previous series, these images are visually arresting embodiments of a skein of social, political and cultural references, charted through particular places and histories.