Hossein Valamanesh

• Illustration — Descriptive plaque of The Australian Monument to The Great Irish Famine His work, which includes sculpture, painting, installation, and video art explores "the paradoxes of selfhood, existence and being". It has been described as "known and loved for its spare aesthetic sensibility, parred back form and poetic visual imagery". He used natural materials, such as ochres, sand and stones, as well as leaves, branches, and twigs, and drew inspiration from Sufi philosophy and Persian poetry, in particular that of the poet Djalâl ad-Dîn Rûmî (Rumi). He also employed human forms and shadows. He completed a number of major public art commissions, many with his wife Angela Valamanesh, also an artist. His 1997 combined performance, photographic, and sculptural work Longing, belonging, which involved burning a Persian rug in the outback to explore the migrant experience, is in the collection of the Art Gallery of NSW In 1998 he completed a large public artwork in Adelaide, Knocking from the inside, on the northern plaza of the Intercontinental Hotel on North Terrace. Angela and he together created An Gorta Mor, the Australian Monument to the Great Irish Famine (1999), at Hyde Park Barracks, Sydney. The monument, one of many memorials to the catastrophe around the world, is incorporated into the wall surrounding the Barracks and "ironically, stands on the site of the original kitchens" there. The table, bowl, tools, and utensils are cast in bronze, and the names of 420 women who arrived as famine orphans are etched into the glass part of the memorial walls. Among the estimated 2,500 people attending the unveiling on 28 August 1999 were 800 famine orphan descendants. In October 2005, a piece of public art by Angela and Hossein, incorporating water, 14 Pieces, situated on North Terrace in front of the South Australian Museum in Adelaide, was officially unveiled. Its form is based on the vertebrae of an extinct marine reptile, the ichthyosaur, held by the museum. Hossein and Angela were commissioned by the City of Adelaide to create the sculpture to replace the Lavington Bonython fountain that had occupied the site from 1965. In 2008 he became involved with "The Rug Project", in which he used one of his works on paper, Crazing, made from stems of maidenhair fern, as the basis for a rug design. Valamanesh worked closely over decades with the Art Gallery of South Australia in Adelaide.

Valamanesh's work is included in major public art collections in Australia and abroad, including: • Alice Springs Art Centre, Alice Springs • Artbank, Australia • Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney • Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide • Art Gallery of Western Australia, Perth • Gryphon Gallery, University of Melbourne • Kadist Art Foundation, Paris, France • Museum of Contemporary Art, Australia, Sydney, Australia • Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa, Wellington • National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, Australia • National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne • Newcastle Art Gallery, Newcastle, New South Wales • Queensland Art Gallery, Brisbane • Sara Hildén Art Museum, Finland • University of South Australia, Adelaide • University of Western Australia, Perth • University of Queensland, Brisbane • Western Australian Institute of Technology, Perth

Valamanesh was awarded a number of fellowships, commissions, grants, residencies, and other honours, including: • 1982: Visual Arts Board of the Australia Council for the Arts grant • 1991: Visual Arts Board Fellowship Residency at Kunstlerhaus Bethanien • 1997: Grand Prize at the 8th Asian Biennial • 1998 Australia Council Fellowship in 1998. • 2010: Member of the Order of Australia on the Queen's Birthday Honours List on 14 June 2010, "For service to the visual arts, particularly as a sculptor and through installation works and public art" In 2013, Valamanesh featured in the ABC / BBC joint production documentary series The Art Of Australia hosted by Edmund Capon, in the first episode entitled Strangers in a Strange Land. In November 2022, Valamanesh was posthumously awarded the South Australian Premier's Award for Lifetime Achievement in the Ruby Awards. In 2007, Valamanesh was amongst 60 artists profiled in Sonia Payes' book Untitled. Portraits of Australian Artists.