Hossein Valamanesh

Collection of the Artist, Australia
Acquired directly from the above by the present owner in the 2000s

Adelaide, Greenaway Art Gallery, Hossein Valamanesh, 1995
Sydney, Sherman Galleries Goodhope, Hossein Valamanesh, 1996
Adelaide, Art Gallery of South Australia, Hossein Valamanesh: A Survey, 2001
Sydney, Museum of Contemporary Art Sydney, Tracing the Shadow: Hossein Valamanesh Recent Works, 2002
Manning, Manning Regional Art Gallery, Time Travel; 1985 - 2009, 2010 
London, Rose Issa Projects, Breath, 2013

Mary Nights, Hossein Valamanesh: Out of Nothingness, Kent Town, 2011. pp. 66-67, illustrated in colour 

Condition: This work is in very good condition. Some faint discolouration to the black paper in some areas all of which in line with the artist choice of medium. Colours: The colours in the catalogue illustration are accurate.
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Hossein Valamanesh was born in Tehran in 1949 and emigrated to Australia in 1973, where he spent several years in Aboriginal communities at Warburton and Papunya before settling in Adelaide. Central to his work is the tension between human beings and the natural world, inspired by the colours and textures of rural Iran and Australia.

Like his contemporaries in the Italian Arte Povera movement, Valamanesh makes heavy use of the rugged qualities of natural materials such as bark, leaves, branches and earth in his work to create works that resonate on a visceral level. As he draws from both his Iranian heritage and the Aboriginal culture of his adopted country, his work naturally explores the complexities of identity.

Throughout his work, Valamanesh shows a deep concern for the interconnectedness of elements such as aesthetics, content and form. Through a wide range of media, including sculpture, video, photography, painting, drawing and language, he challenges us to consider the fundamental unity of individual persons with each other and the natural world.  Although his struggle with the metaphysics of existence has always been a fluid, ongoing process, he has shown a great fascination with Buddhism and the magical qualities of the myths and legends of indigenous societies, still free from dogmatic thought and practice. This fascination is reflected in the clarity of concept and composition that forms a constant throughout his work.

In Learning to Read, there are two large panels of identical size: one consisting of twenty smaller black panels, each containing the Farsi word for “nothingness” written in a stronger black, while its counterpart is entirely in white with simple illustrations of common objects, as if taken from a children’s alphabet. Their names, however, have been omitted, resulting in a profound contrast between the colourful images on the white panel with the dark, purely textual nothingness of the black panel and reflecting the disconnection between the material and the ideal, that which exists only in language.

Valamanesh was the subject of numerous solo exhibitions across the world, including Selected works, 1992-2013 at the Grey Noise Gallery in Dubai, 2013, Tracing the Shadow at the Art Front and Hillside Galleries in Tokyo, 1997, and an exhibition at the Kunstlerhaus Bethanien in Berlin, 1991. He has also participated in prestigious group exhibitions, including The Rose Crossing at Brisbane City Art Gallery and Hong Kong Arts Centre, 1999-2000 ; Identities: Art from Australia, Taipei Fine Arts Museum, 1993 and Australia at the Royal Academy of Arts in London, 2013. He was awarded the Smithsonian Artist Research Fellowship in 2014.