Hossein Valamanesh presents Passing, 2014, a two channel video projection featuring fourteen minutes of moving image filmed on a railway line through the landscape in silence. It was filmed from a train in the Yarra Valley, Victoria, with a camera taking in the oncoming view from the front, and another filming the departure simultaneously.
In the middle of the room there sits a pile of stones like the ones we find on the railway tracks. Each one carries a first name in memory of the dead (in many scripts) including at least English, Farsi and Japanese. Hossein notes that, "Inspiration for the work came in 2006 when I was invited to participate in an International residency program at Aomori Contemporary Art Center in northern Japan. While there I travelled to Osorezan, an ancient site of major significance to all religions practiced in Japan. Osorezan consists of a small lake on top of a mountain surrounded by white sand, rubble and stones with the steam of sulphuric vapor occasionally appearing through the rocks. It is considered an 'in-between-place', purgatory, where all souls gather before passing to the other world. Visitors to this site create piles of small stones with names of recently departed written on them in memory of their friends and relatives."
Hossein hopes that the two moving images and the empty space of the installation evoke a sense of an 'in-between-place', as we inhabit 'the space between', a bridge between past and future and the ever presence of death, and passing of life.
Hossein Valamanesh emigrated from Iran to Perth in 1973 and currently lives in Adelaide with with his wife Angela Valamanesh. He works with different media from installation to sculpture, painting, collage, and more recently, video in collaboration with his son Nasseim Valamanesh. He has exhibited internationally and has artworks in numerous public art collections, including, National Gallery of Australia, MCA Sydney, Art Gallery of NSW, National Gallery of Victoria, Art Gallery of SA, Art Gallery of WA, and the Queensland Art Gallery
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