The artist with Morticia's Garden 1, acquired by the National Gallery of Australia. Photograph courtesy of Saul Steed and AGSA.
Gallery Sally Dan-Cuthbert is delighted to present Once I was a plant, Angela Valamanesh's second solo exhibition with the gallery.
Valamanesh is one of Australia's most important artists working across ceramics and painting, with a career spanning more than four decades.
Following the success of her first solo exhibition with the gallery, The Mortician’s Garden, Valamanesh continues to reference the protagonist, Morticia Addams, from the Addams Family 1960s sitcom. Thorny, glazed ceramic stems are pushed further by the artist, turning them into continuous, cloud-like forms. Morticia’s Egg, a major ceramic work that spans the wall and floor, is one of Valamanesh’s most significant undertakings to date.
Presented alongside the Mortician series are Valamanesh's new beguiling paintings, Birds and bees and Flesh, intriguing glazed ceramics.
Birds and bees is a series of small paintings perfectly framed in twisted ceramic. The images are drawn from direct observations of plants and insects in the artist’s flourishing garden. The result is a series of intimate and cherished moments that pay homage to Valamanesh's admired botanical artists, Mary Delany (1700-1788) and Jan van Kessel (1626-1679).
The pale fleshy colours of the oval forms in Flesh can be seen not solely as skin colour but something interior or perhaps an undefined living form.
Valamanesh's work is held in significant public collections, including the National Gallery of Australia and the Art Gallery of South Australia. In 2008, Angela Valamanesh was the subject of a SALA (South Australian Living Artist) monograph and, in 2019, presented a major survey ICON at Jam Factory, South Australia which proceeded to tour across Australia for the following three years. She was commissioned to create major new work for Free/State, 2022 Adelaide Biennial of Australian Art, Art Gallery of South Australia and in 2023, Valamanesh was the recipient of the prestigious Mordant Family/Australia Council Affiliated Fellowship, at the American Academy, Rome. This year, Valamanesh received the Bettison and James Award, South Australia. Her work is found in private collections around the world including Australia, Japan and the United States.
Once I was a plant is an impressive presentation that shares Valamanesh's deep interest in science and poetry, the rational and the irrational, the formal and symbolic through fine painting and ceramics.
