Neville Assad - Salha
12 .SymposiumNeville Assad - Salha
Neville Assad-Salha has been working with clay over a forty year period. He studied at the South Australian School of Art then ran his own studio in the Barossa Valley before going on to working in many Universities and Art Schools throughout Melbourne, Victoria and Adelaide, South Australia. During his widely accomplished career, he has headed departments at the Meat Market Craft Centre, The Victoria College of the Arts, the Jam Factory Contemporary Craft and Design Centre and also the Adelaide College of Arts, as well as being a Research Fellow at the University of South Australia. Neville currently shares his time between his role as a Professor of Fine Arts in Lebanon and his home in the Barossa Valley, Australia. Neville’s works are in many private collections and also in State Galleries in Australia. He has been commissioned for many pieces of work including the Sydney Opera House. Artist Statement. My work over the past several years has looked closely at cross-cultural references. I have traveled extensively to many countries working with other artists. This has given me the ability to work across different cultural identities. My works look closely at space (not what space is but what it represents – a metaphor to space). Many of my works relate to the vessel form. This in turn, reflects the image of the human form being the vessel along with some structural sculptural forms looking at architectural constructions being the tomb (a place of birth, a place of living, a place of death). Many of my pieces are constructed from steel, clay, bronze and sometimes stone. These in turn become a diagram of space. In some cases, I work with installation performance pieces, producing large scale forms in the landscape made out of clay and firing them on site. Many of the works vary in scale from a small bowl which can be held in the palm of your hand to a human scale which one can enter into like a dwelling.
