Hossein Valamanesh

In November 2022, Valamanesh was posthumously awarded the South Australian Premier's Award for Lifetime Achievement in the Ruby Awards.

On 15 January 2022, Valamanesh died of a heart attack in Adelaide, at the age of 72. He was survived by his wife Angela AM and at least one child, Nassiem.

Nassiem Valmanesh, also an artist, studied filmmaking at the Victorian College of the Arts and as of 2021 lives in Melbourne. His work was featured in an exhibition with his father's at the Buxton Contemporary at the University of Melbourne, in 2021.

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 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.

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.

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 1998 he completed a large public artwork in Adelaide, Knocking from the inside, on the northern plaza of the Intercontinental Hotel on North Terrace.

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

He continued his art education at the South Australian School of Art after moving to Adelaide in 1974, graduating in 1977.

He emigrated to Perth, Western Australia, in 1973, and while living there travelled to remote Aboriginal communities in WA, where he felt a connection between their ancient culture and his own Persian culture. He worked with the Round Earth Company and Aboriginal children.

Angela Valamanesh was born in 1953 in Port Pirie, South Australia. She graduated from the South Australian School of Art in 1992, and subsequently earned an MA at the University of South Australia. She won the Anne & Gordon Samstag International Visual Arts Scholarship in 1996, using it to undertake postgraduate studies at the Glasgow School of Art in Scotland. She and Hossein undertook several public art projects together.

Hossein Valamanesh AM (2 March 1949 – 15 January 2022) was an Iranian-Australian contemporary artist who lived and worked in Adelaide, South Australia. He worked in mixed media, printmaking, installations, and sculpture. He often collaborated with his wife, Angela Valamanesh.

Hossein Valamanesh was born in Tehran, Iran on 2 March 1949. He worked with theatre director Bijan Mofid from 1968 to 1971, and graduated from at the Tehran School of Art in Tehran in 1970.