ANGELA VALAMANESH
b. 1953, Port Pirie
Lives and works in Adelaide, Australia
Angela Valamanesh’s work is both familiar and mysterious: recognizable, but not immediately understood. Her drawings, ceramic objects, and watercolours are the result of an incredible depth of research, referencing complex scientific, historic, and philosophical ideas.
Valamanesh’s imagery stems from micro- and macro-biology, historic anatomical and botanical illustrations, natural history collections, and rare books. Valamanesh’s oeuvre is populated with the animal, vegetable, and mineral with glimpses of microbes, bacteria, pathogens, and spores.[1]
Angela Valamanesh was born in Port Pirie, South Australian in 1953 and currently lives and works in Adelaide. Valamanesh holds a Diploma in Design in Ceramics from the South Australian School of Art (1977), a Master of Visual Arts from the University of South Australia (1993), and a PhD from the University of South Australia (2012).
Valamanesh has participated in many solo and group exhibitions including: Heartlands, Contemporary Art from South Australia, Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide (2013); and the South Australian Living Artists Festival, Contemporary Art Centre of South Australia, Adelaide (2015). Valamanesh’s work is held in several significant collections in Australia including the National Gallery of Australia, Canberra and the Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide.
“The practice of building groups or arrangements has existed in my work for a number of years now and their linear qualities still remind me of the way letters form words or sentences on a page. Also in this more recent work the reference to the way specimens in collections are often presented to us is perhaps relevant.” (excerpt from artist statement, 2007)
[1] Kenneally, Cath. Angela Valamanesh: About being here. Wakefield Press, 2009.
NEW WORK
/ 2 August - 10 September, 2023
My studio works explore the often-seductive connections between plants and animals in a variety of media including ceramic, works on paper, painting and mixed media and is underpinned by my ongoing research into the connections that exist between all life forms. It expands on and explores my fascination with the diversity of all life forms, their similarities and differences. Phenomena such as the bleaching of coral in our reefs, the death of fish in our river systems, sustained drought and devastating fire affect us all. These issues permeate our conscious and subconscious and have an impact on artists in various ways. While I have resisted making unambiguous statements about the environmental impact of humans on our planet, many of my works including the more recent The Mortician’s Garden series have indirect connections to these problems.
/ 2017
ALMOST HUMAN / 2015
‘Art, philosophy, and science each erect a plane, a sieve, over chaos, a historicotemporal and mutually referential field of inter- acting artworks, concepts, and experiments (respectively), not to order or control chaos but to contain some of its fragments in some small space (a discourse, a work of art, an experiment), to reduce it to some form that the living can utilize without being completely overwhelmed.’
- Grosz, Elizabeth, 2008, Chaos, Territory, Art. Deleuze and the Framing of the Earth, Columbia University Press, Pg 28.
The various works in Almost human began with my observations and drawings from an anatomical textbook for medical students. Later I branched off into the field of comparative anatomy and detoured into the province of early scientific illustration made using microscopes. These collected observations have become a deep pool of imagery that I can draw upon.
I like the idea of fishing in relation to making art - perhaps it’s like the sieve that Elizabeth Grosz alludes to - not knowing what fragment I’ll catch and being surprised sometimes.
/ 2012
Once again my work takes its cue from scientific illustration, in particular the world of the microscopic. Airborne, 2011, is based on images of pollen grains. Seemingly infinite in their variety, each flowering plant requiring pollination by a specific grain, they were first observed and illustrated with the aid of a microscope in the 1600’s by botanists such as Nehemiah Grew. Ferdinand Bauer’s more recent watercolours painted in the mid 1800’s are, like Grew’s images, still recognisable as the same material portrayed with the use of today’s electron microscope.
In Airborne the cavity formed by plaster casting of a solid form acknowledges transience and loss, impermanence. Every living flowering plant has had a different pollen grain and the study of extinct flora includes the study of fossilised pollen grains, paleopalynology. With this in mind I set about making a visual representation of a minute fraction of the invisible material surrounding us: the world in which we are embedded.
Apart from pollen grains, the other microscopic material represented in this exhibition is the parasite. Again, of startling variety, and offcourse not always microscopic, parasites, both plant and animal, according to ABC Radio National’s Natasha Mitchell of All in the Mind constitute half of life on earth. We need some parasites, although not all, and probably not those that manipulate the behaviour of their hosts by co-opting their brains.
The Earthly garden series with its combination of ceramic and watercolour on paper again relies on the transformation of scientific illustration. Echoing the phenomenon of collecting, naming, describing, ordering and classifying, ultimately an impossible task when one takes into account the predominance of microscopic life around us and the extinction of many life-forms,the works take the form of poetic distillations.
A LITTLE BIT OF EVERYTHING
/ 2010
'There is no science without fancy, and no art without fact.'
- Vladimir Nabokov
The works for this exhibition are all drawn from images of microscopic life, most of which come from early scientific illustration, from sources such as the Barr Smith Library’s Special Collection. Some are more clearly identifiable than others. I am interested in the interconnectedness of life and the potential of a union between science and poetry, the rational and the irrational, formal and symbolic.
A little bit of everything, an on-going series, is perhaps more directly related to rare book collections. Apart from the text and images contained within the early publications, the physical quality of the paper, often slightly buckled and dotted with age spots, like old skin, is fascinating. Watercolour on paper is a completely different process than making objects from clay but there are some similarities such as the transformation of material from wet to dry and the surprises that arise due to the unpredictable qualities of both materials.
ALL CREATURES
WORKS FROM THE NATURAL
HISTORY COLLECTION
/ 2009
Anatomical studies have been used extensively by artists over the years especially as reference points for figurative sculpture and portrait painting but early anatomists also made three dimensional wax models of body parts as teaching aids and these surprisingly durable and beautiful objects have also been inspirational.
More recently the imagery in my work has included enlargements of microscopic organisms. The work usually begins with what I think is an interesting image, sometimes developed from a drawing or photograph to a three dimensional form and scale which feels right.
Somehow the use of clay as the media for constructing these forms feels appropriate to the subject matter, something to do with it being such a common material that we are all connected to.
ANIMAL, VEGETABLE, MINERAL / 2009
'The series ‘Animal, Vegetable, Mineral’ 2007 grew from my observations of human anatomy as presented in medical and anatomical atlases that depict views of our bodies not normally seen by us. I became interested in how little we know of our bodies and how visually similar some of our body parts are to plants: root vegetables or cauliflowers!
Anatomical studies have been used extensively by artists over the years especially as reference points for figurative sculpture and portrait painting but early anatomists also made three dimensional wax models of body parts as teaching aids and these surprisingly durable and beautiful objects have also been inspirational.
More recently the imagery in my work has included enlargements of microscopic organisms. The work usually begins with what I think is an interesting image, sometimes developed from a drawing or photograph to a three dimensional form and scale which feels right. Often this will suggest the next object and a sequence is usually configured before all the finished pieces are in place.
The practice of building groups or arrangements has existed in my work for a number of years now and their linear qualities still remind me of the way letters form words or sentences on a page. Also in this more recent work the reference to the way specimens in collections are often presented to us is perhaps relevant.
Somehow the use of clay as the media for constructing these forms feels appropriate to the subject matter, something to do with it being such a common material that we are all connected to.
COLLABORATIVE WORKS / 2005
Most works of art have within them the seed of an idea and the opportunity of exhibiting them may make it possible for these seeds to grow in the viewers mind with different interpretations. My original idea is only the beginning and I also follow the development of the work with interest. It is by our looking at the works that they realise their potential.
I do not wish to write about the ideas behind the work but would prefer to talk about the process of making them. In general I do not set out to do a particular show. The work accumulates over time and about 6 months before the show the gallery space becomes an important factor. The complementary or contrasting nature of the works is considered and I take great pleasure in arranging them to animate the space.
Most of the works in this exhibition were actually made over the past 18 months but a few of the images are from three years ago when we visited Iran. Images and materials are regularly collected and they have to wait for their turn.
Our portrait in 'On Reflection' was taken north of Tehran in the beautiful foothills of the Alborz mountains. Sitting by a stream a young Afghani man with a wooden box camera (as I recall from my past) took our picture. Not using any film the negative image was imprinted onto photographic paper and then photographed again to give a positive image. The negative image interested us both more as it appeared that light was emanating from within. The image for 'You become will earth' was collected from a newspaper in Tehran around the same time.
In parallel to projects and other activities and evolving ideas I look around me with open and intuitive eyes, be it in the front gardens of our neighborhood, the peppercorn tree in my back garden (which has come to nothing) or in Bundanon in NSW, collecting maiden hair fern leaves. These collected materials and images become the object of my attention and contemplation. Late last year I found a large broken branch of a white cedar tree in the street which I dragged back to my studio. It took a while before it could tell me what it wanted to be but eventually it grew from a central point to a complex connection of branches which necessitated its transformation into bronze. It became 'Fallen Branch'.
These collected materials and images have their own potential for becoming something else and this is realised by manipulation and arrangement. There are also works that start from an idea and the challenge is to find the right material and method to bring them to life.
The working life of an artist can be solitary which in itself is not a bad thing. I have been fortunate to share this time with my partner, Angela, and we have shared a studio for more than 20 years. Beside collaborating on major projects we have made some sculptural works and a number of works on paper together. Although she is acknowledged through the collaborative works what is not seen is her critical dialogue, advice and assistance for which I would like to thank her. Also I would like to thank Tim Thomson and crew for bronze casting, Catherine Buddle for assistance with digital manipulation of 'On Reflection', Gunter May for his advice and for making the wooden ladder, Ian Burdon who brought me the broken branch with the Jay nest and Minoo Momeni for permission to use the image for 'You will become Earth'.