Hossein Valamanesh and wife Angela bring an Iranian South Australian sensibility to Adelaide public art
The 14 Pieces (2005) artwork outside the South Australian Museum on North Terrace, Adelaide city, was created in 2005 by Hossein Valamanesh with his artist wife Angela. It replaced the Sir John Lavington Bonython fountain.
Iranian-born South Australian artist Hossein Valamanesh died suddenly in 2022 before his latest work was to be shown at the Adelaide Biennial of Australian Art.
Valamanesh was born in Iran in 1949 and graduated from the School of Fine Art in Tehran in 1970 before emigrating to Australia in 1973 and completing more studies at the South Australian School of Art, where he met his future wife, Port Pirie-born Angela.
Paul Greenaway’s GAGPROJECTS (previously Greenaway Art Gallery), that represented Valamanesh and his artist wife Angela, said that over 49 years he had become as one of Australia’s leading contemporary artists “with a stellar career that took him all over the world”. Inspired by the writings of the Persian poet Rumi and his passion for a pared-back, haiku-like approach to material and form, Valamanesh artworks were powerful and poetic.”
Valamanesh’s practice encompassed media from installation, sculpture to video, with his work often exploring “notions of an essential connection to place, the nature of being, and the ephemerality of existence”. He presented in many exhibitions in Australia and overseas,with a major solo exhibition, Puisque tou passe (This will also pass), showing at the Institut des Cultures d’Islam in Paris in 2022.
Works by Valamanesh were in many institutions, including the Art Gallery of South Australia, the National Gallery of Victoria and the National Gallery of Australia.
Valamanesh has often made artwork with Angela and their son Nassiem. The couple had a studio at the centre of their Adelaide home and worked together on commissions including the public artworks 14 Pieces (2005) outside the South Australian Museum; Gingo Gates (2011) at the western entrance of the Adelaide Botanic Garden, and Irish famine Memorial (1999), a bronze sculpture at the Hyde Park Barracks in Sydney.
Both Hossein and Angela Valamanesh were among 25 leading Australian contemporary artists selected to exhibit in the 2022 Adelaide Biennial of Australian Art: Free/State, curated by Sebastian Goldspink and set to be presented at the Art Gallery of South Australia. They had been collaborating on new works exploring the concept of home.
