Hossein Valamanesh - Biography
b. 1949, Tehran, Iran ; d. 2022, Adelaide, South Australia / Lived and worked in Adelaide, South Australia
Hossein Valamanesh graduated from the School of Fine Art in Tehran in 1970. Between 1968 and 1971 he worked with the renowned theatre director, the late Bijan Mofid. He later immigrated to Australia in 1973 arriving in Perth. In 1974, he travelled to central Australia with Round Earth Company where he worked with Aboriginal children at a number of different settlements for four months. In 1975, he commenced further studies in visual arts at the South Australian School of Art, and since graduating he has exhibited frequently in Australia and overseas including Germany, Poland, Finland, Japan, UAE and UK.
He completed a number of major public art commissions including Knocking from the Inside (1989), Adelaide; You just sit here… FARET Tachikawa (1994), Tokyo. His collaborations with Angela Valamanesh include An Gorta Mor, memorial to the Great Irish Famine (1999), Hyde Park Barracks, Sydney; 14 Pieces on North Terrace, in Adelaide and also completed the Ginkgo Gate, a new western entrance to the Botanic Gardens, (2009 – 2010), Adelaide.
Valamanesh received numerous awards – the most recent being the Adelaide Film Festival Art + Moving Image commission in 2015. He also received the Smithsonian Artist Research Fellowship in Washington DC in 2014; the Australia Council Residency in Kunstlerhaus Bethanien, Berlin in 1991 and an Australia Council Fellowship in 1998.
A monograph of his work, written by Paul Carter, was published in 1996 by Art & Australia and a major survey of his work was held at the Art Gallery of South Australia in mid 2001 with an accompanying catalogue which included essays by Sarah Thomas, Ian North & Paul Carter. A survey of his work was held at Museum of Contemporary Art in Sydney, 2002 and recently at Institut de Cultures d'Islam in Paris.
In 2007, he completed a residency at Aomori Contemporary Art Center in Japan and a number of his works were shown in Prism, Contemporary Art from Australia at the Bridgestone Art Museum, Tokyo. In collaboration with Brink Productions, Andrew Bovell and Quinton Grant he completed the stage design for When the Rain Stops Falling that was first performed in 2008 Adelaide Festival of Arts.
In 2011, a monograph of his work, titled Hossein Valamanesh, Out of nothingness, was published by Wakefield Press with essays by Mary Knights and Ian North.
His work was included in most major public Australian art collections and was acquired by the Kadist Art Foundation in Paris in 2014.