THE PUZZLE OF ROCKHAMPTON AND THE FLOATING WORLD
Rockhampton's first visual arts residency began as a puzzle for the local arts community and ended as a different kind of puzzle for the artist. The lranian-born sculptor, Hossein Valamenesh, who now lives in Adelaide. Was artist-in-residence at Rockhampton's Waiter Reid Creative Arts Centre from July to December 1986.
For some, the experience was an unsettling brush With contemporary sculpture and installations. For others it became a de-mystifying process that worked through informal studio encounters and beach workshops with Valamenesh. For Valamenesh himself. who has previous residency experience at Fremantle (at Praxis) and at Mount Gambler, a puzzle expressed itself in Untitled. The work was among the five drawings and eight reliefs and sculptures he exhibited to inaugurate the Reid Centre's Gallery at the end of his residency. Conceived as a wall work. Untitled became a floor sculpture of earth, bauxite, bamboo, black iron oxide and PVA on plywood. In it a red cloud is tethered under a slotted frame. Above that a silhouette of the artist is pinned down by a spherical stone. The effect is of a kind of battened-down floating, a promise of imaginative or spiritual possibility. Valamenesh, who remains unsure about the sculpture, plans to explore its implications in future work.
Untitled seems to be an ambiguous bridge between the familiar spiritual influence of the Iranian and central Australian deserts (where water is precious. needing protection) and the new Australian coastal image of abundant (sometimes wasted) water. Valamenesh's exhibition showed the tensions of this change, which has much to do with notions of power, dogma, the spirit, and artistic openness. Another Untitled, a triptych, uses earth colours, diamond-shaped squares and triangles, and images of a central... The rest of this article is available to subscribers of Eyeline