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Hossein Valamanesh was born in Iran in 1949 and emigrated to Australia in 1973, settling permanently in Adelaide in 1975. His art is characterised by the use of natural materials – branches, flames, leaves, sand, mud, seeds and earth – and an active engagement with the landscape surrounding him. Drawing upon the culture of his Persian heritage and his experience of a new country, it explores the complexities of identity and place with a profound depth and beauty.
Hossein Valamanesh works across drawing, painting, sculpture and installation, as well as large-scale public projects and video.1 Born in Iran in 1949, he studied fine art in Tehran from 1967 to 1970 and immigrated to Australia in 1973. His art is characterised by its engagement with the natural world and its unique fusion of his Persian heritage with contemporary Australian life. Employing leaves, stones and earth alongside ordinary domestic objects – a rug, an oil lamp, slippers – it reflects themes of home, distance, longing and love, as well as the complexities of identity and place.
With its modest materials and economy of form, Valamanesh’s art has been aligned with the Italian artistic movement of arte povera (or ‘poor art’) and earth art. Earth Work (1981/2002), for example – a representation of the artist’s fingerprint in raised, oval whorls of compressed earth 10 metres in diameter on the front lawn of the Museum of Contemporary Art – reflected well his engagement with the landscape. Earth Work sought to explore individual identity within the wider scheme of nature and the notion of the artist’s creative ‘mark’.
Since his arrival in Australia, Valamanesh has forged lasting connections to the land. He has noted similarities between the Australian desert landscape and that of Sistan-e-Baluchestan, near his childhood home of Khash, suggesting a ‘common ground’ between his former and adopted homes. In 1974 he spent several months in the Aboriginal communities of Warburton in Western Australia and Papunya in the Northern Territory, working with artists there before settling in Adelaide in 1975. This was a particularly profound experience and he maintains an active interest in, and respect for, Aboriginal culture.
A longstanding interest in Persian poetry also informs Valamanesh’s art, reflecting themes of personal identity and spiritual enlightenment. Inspired by Sufism, an ancient and contemplative form of Islam, the verse of Jalaluddin Rumi (1207–1273) is particularly significant. Poetic references appear frequently in Valamanesh’s art, both in subject matter and title; on occasion they are given expression in Farsi script with its elegant, calligraphic sweeps and curls.
The lover circles his own heart (1993) takes its title from a verse by Rumi. Comprising a swathe of white fabric that rotates in broad, circular sweeps, it invokes the ecstatic, trance-like dance of whirling dervishes or the myth of creation itself (Rumi: “we came whirling out of nothingness scattering stars like dust”). It speaks of the perplexity of human existence (“every atom turns bewildered”) and seems to suggest that by loving another, we may come to understand ourselves (“the lover circles his own heart”).
A more recent work reflects the artist’s exploration of the video medium. Made in collaboration with his son Nassiem Valamanesh, Passing Time (2011) is a simple, single-screen work featuring a pair of hands (the artist’s own), their forefingers and thumbs moving gently back and forth in rhythmic motion to form an infinity symbol. Passing Time does not convey a specific narrative as much as a universal humanity, told through gesture and touch. Quiet, contemplative and open-ended, the repeated gestures have no beginning or end – they simply exist in time, together tracing its passage.
