Garland Magazine, Issue 39

Niloufar Lovegrove
Jun 5
4 min read

Updated: Jun 12

By Pamela See

Essays and articles ✿ Artworks instagram

1 June 2025

Niloufar Lovegrove, Equable Goddess, 2022, photo: Louis Lim

For Pamela See, the gestures of Persian Australian artist Niloufar Lovegrove (Pishva) demonstrate a self-reliant reverence for nature.

Niloufar Lovegrove ✿ Hands full of wisdom

At the beginning of March 2025, the opening of Tensile Connections at Onespace Gallery was delayed by the arrival of a one-in-a-half century meteorological event. Meanjin (Brisbane) was buffered by Mulgumpin (Moreton Island) on 10-11 March. But, whilst many a prayer may have been answered, Ex-cyclone Alfred still brought 275mm of rain and a king tide of 12.3m. It was the heaviest since 1974 and the highest in thirty-eight years. Widespread flooding and extreme soil erosion ensued. It was in this aftermath that I first encountered the handsome handiwork of Central Queensland-based artist Niloufar Lovegrove (Pishva).

Accessed by walking up a narrow rise to a river bend, the gallery was befitting of the 54-panel print Equable Goddess (2022). In a year when Iranian women cut their hair in protest, Anahita’s is depicted as free-flowing like a torrent of water. The beauty and brutality of this source of fertility are insinuated without geo-specific markers. It could as easily be referential to the nearby Brisbane River as it might be to the Fitzroy River. The by-and-large glass exterior further elevated the viewing experience. It was the perfect place for this Persian goddess to preside.

An evocation of Iranian wisdom

The motifs in this “mural” have been executed with restraint and refinement. This may reflect her initial training in visual communications at Tehran University during the 1990s. She migrated to Australia during the Iraq War on a Skilled Independent Visa. A decade onwards, she became a “stay at home mum” with a non-Iranian husband in Rockhampton. Born of a yearning for the familia, Lovegrove reflected upon “the smallest details” of her childhood, like the “flowers on Persian rugs”, artifacts she saw at the Reza Abbasi Museum, and poetry from the Shahnameh. There is, subsequently, something romantic about the language she employs.

A number of deities are depicted in a style reminiscent of Ghalamkari woodblock fabric printing. It’s a connection explicated in Anahita’s exquisite garments. The motifs they bear include Chiana leaves, which appeared in Safavid Period manuscripts. The ancient Persian tree signifies eternity. New beginnings, in the sense of the Zoroastrian tradition of sowing seeds for Nowruz, could be read into the representations of cobs of seed. Also interwoven are nightingales, a modern Persian symbol for love.

Depictions of the king and queen of Susa, symbols of faith and resilience, respectively, were also inlaid.

Iconography sourced from ancient Persian pottery has been printed on Tengucho and chine-collied (blackened) into the Kitakata background. Among them is the god of vegetation, the goat, whose horns were thought to draw down rain from the heavens. Depictions of the king and queen of Susa, symbols of faith and resilience, respectively, were also inlaid. These smaller blocks were re-editioned on Lokata for separate sale. The repetition of this imagery draws attention to the materiality of their substrates.

Pragmatism in process

Having completed a Certificate IV in Printmaking at Central Queensland University in the mid-2010s, Lovegrove applies her ancient Persian aesthetics to linoleum. Her engagement with papers produced from natural fibres in Japan and India provides an old-world flavour, hints at Persian traditions of papermaking that predate their European counterparts.

The final series of Lovegrove’s artwork in this group exhibition, Nourishing Hands (2025), has been printed and sewn onto the handmade Japanese papers: opaque Okawara and translucent Unryushi. The hand of papermakers is especially evident in the latter, as the long strands of mulberry bast fibre are laid in multiple washes. The transposition and layering of gestural hand-prints convey movement. Alluded to is the Iranian needlework tradition of pateh. However, in Lovegrove’s contemporary Australian adaptation, feather stitch and French knots have atypically been employed.

A regal engagement

The colours of indigo and gold signify royalty in Persian culture. The icons of clouds and Cyprus saplings also connote vastness and eternity, respectively. Viewers may recognise the latter form as boteh, a Persian symbol which was adopted across the Near East. In Australia, it appears with ubiquity in textiles from India and Turkey. Proliferation and permutation appear to have magnified the majesty of this culture. Despite contemporary conceptions of Iran, it was the first king of Persia who laid the foundation for human rights. In the 6th century BCE, the policies of Cyrus the Great fostered racial equity and religious freedom.

A meeting of venerable ideologies

How might Lovegrove’s propagation of these symbols in Central Queensland be perceived? As per its namesake, the British settlement of Rockhampton was established on a largely indomitable igneous landscape. The volcanic plugs continue to be worshipped by the displaced Daurabal people. The municipality remains reliant on the primary industries of cattle, cane and coal. A Eurocentric lens is almost inextricable when viewing art within galleries and museums in Australia. Through it, Lovegrove’s might appear somewhat “frontier”.

A testament to resilience

But disasters, particularly catalysed by meteorological events, literally have a levelling effect. Meanjin residents having to stockpile essentials whilst this exhibition was being installed proves a stark reminder. Lovegrove’s compositions could be considered a supply of hope. The religious might read the symbols as a reverence for nature. The application using handcrafts is a testament to resilience and self-reliance—an agency accessible by all. There is comfort to be found in Lovegroves’s contemplations, which represent the culmination of many craft traditions. Whether we are grappling with a citywide catastrophe or a personal predicament, a reminder of how generations before us prevailed may prove handy.

Niloufar Lovegrove, Equable Goddess carving process

Niloufar Lovegrove