.embed-vimeo iframe { max-width: 100%; } @media screen and (max-width: 600px) { .embed-vimeo iframe { max-height: 200px; } }

 

Back to Index

 

 

ERIC BRIDGEMAN

 

(b. 1986 in Redcliffe, Queensland, Australia. Lives and works in Brisbane, Australia and Wahgi Valley, Jiwaka Province, Papua New Guinea.)

 

Eric Bridgeman was born 1986 in Redcliffe, Queensland, and lives and works in Brisbane, Australia and Wahgi Valley, Jiwaka Province, Papua New Guinea (PNG). Bridgeman is a multidisciplinary artist, based in Australia and Papua New Guinea, working with photography, painting, installation, video and performance in a variety of applications often to do with masculinity, portraiture, culture and politics. His relational art works are framed by personal connections to his maternal Yuri Alaiku clan, from Omdara, Simbu Province, Papua New Guinea, and his paternal upbringing in the suburban landscape of Brisbane, Queensland, Australia. The dominant focus of his work involves the discussion of social and cultural issues, often using the theatre of sport as a springboard for his ideas, addressing notions of masculinity as expressed in sporting culture and in the realm of ‘tribal warfare’ in the PNG Highlands, which mimics the drama, color and trickery seen in its national sport, Rugby League. Challenging the hardwired stereotypes of centuries of colonialist ethnographies, Bridgeman uses reconstruction, slap-stick, and parody, to interrogate his own cultural and sexual identity in a broader context of belonging. In doing so, his work also seeks to address and subvert the harsh social realities of both his homeland cultures.

Bridgeman holds a Bachelor of Photography from the Queensland College of Art, Griffith University, Brisbane (2010), where he developed his seminal work “The Sport and Fair Play of Aussie Rules” (2008-2010). Significant solo exhibitions and commissions include: “Kala Büng”, Milani Gallery, Brisbane, AU (2018); “My Brother and the Beast”, Gallerysmith, Melbourne, AU (2018); SNO 145, Sydney Non-Objective, Sydney, AU (2018); “The Fight”, Monash Gallery of Art, Melbourne, AU (2017); “All Stars”, Carriageworks, Sydney, AU (2012); “Haus Man”, Museum of Contemporary Art Australia (MCA), Sydney, AU (2012). Recent group exhibitions include: “Nirin”, the 22nd Biennale of Sydney, AU (2020); “Just Not Australian”, Artspace, Sydney, AU (2019); “Australians in PNG”, Monash Gallery of Art, Melbourne, AU (2017); “Number 1 Neighbour”, Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art (QAGOMA), Brisbane, AU (2016); The 8th Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art, QAGOMA, Brisbane, AU (2015–2016).

ARTIST STATEMENT

My name is Yuriyal Awari Muka. I am the son of Raymond George Bridgeman, descendent of English convict and Australian Joe Bridgeman, and Veronika Gikope Muka, daughter of Muka Alai of the Yuri Alaiku clan, Omdara, Simbu Province, Papua New Guinea. I grew up in the contested land of Australia, and down under I respond to the Anglo-Saxon name Eric Bridgeman. Aside from my cultural identity, I am an artist. I use a range of materials to produce photographic portraits, performances, designs, multimedia video and sculptural installation between my homes in Australia and PNG. Over the past decade I have been spending time living, making and cruising up and down and around the Okuk ‘Highlands’ Highway in PNG. After my second visit as an adult in 2009, my family invited me back and offered to build me a house. In the years that followed, I became entrenched within the community in Kudjip, Jiwaka Province, comprising of Yuri Alaiku hauslain (relatives) from Simbu, many tambu (in-law) and local papa graun (custodial land owners). I began creating multimedia work in partnership with family members as a point of personal exchange. My role as Yuriyal (Man of the Yuri), community member, art maker, producer and messenger emerged through times of hamimas (happiness), hevi (trouble), lewa (love), longlong sikarap (illness), taim no gut (death), singsing (celebration) and planti samting bagarap (politics).

– Eric Bridgeman

[Excerpted from Eric Bridgeman’s photo essay “Wait man kam (White man is coming)” at 4A Center for Contemporary Asian Art, Sydney, Australia.

Read more on: http://www.4a.com.au/4a_papers_article/wait-man-kam-white-man-coming/ > >



 

TRIPLE X BITTER

2008, Video, 13 min

 

 

The performance video Triple X Bitter enacts a deranged pub scenario in psychedelic colors, involving Boi Boi the Labourer, a group of boisterous pub-goers, two pseudo-black babes and an inflatable pool. With Bridgeman taking center stage as Boi Boi the Labourer, the artist constructs and deconstructs the unfolding events, allowing the participants to explore their own perceptions, fears and understandings of rules of behavior in Australian pub culture, and its pervasive role in Australian cultural identity.

Triple X Bitter is one of seven performance-for-video works produced as part of Bridgeman’s interdisciplinary project The Sport and Fair Play of Aussie Rules (2008-2010). Drawing subversive parallels between the theatres of sport and ethnography, this body of work explores cross-cultural identity through the playful deconstruction of sex, gender and race politics. Bridgeman seeks to subvert race and gender stereotypes that underpin the foundations of national identity within contemporary Australia and Papua New Guinea. Using typical symbols from both nations, Bridgeman makes environments and scenarios in which fictional characters interact and explore tasks and activities inspired by the divergent ways of life from both his home countries.

Performed in both public and private spaces, and referencing ethnographic studies of tribal identities during periods of colonization, these carnivalesque acts are based on the paradoxical and improvised performances of its participants. Using blackface, whiteface, slapstick, and parody, Bridgeman irreverently constructs a bizarre amalgam between the symbologies, stereotypes, and socio-cultural roles in Australia and Papua New Guinea, situating his works in environments that simulate constructed rules of behavior, such as sporting arenas, pubs and work sites.

First exhibited at the Institute of Modern Art, Brisbane in 2008, Bridgeman’s The Sport and Fair Play of Aussie Rules has since been shown in various forms at the Australian Centre for Photography; the University of Queensland Art Museum; Gallery 4A, Sydney; Next Wave Festival, Melbourne; the Ian Potter Museum of Art, Melbourne; and others.



 

THE FIGHT

2010, Video, 8 min 8 sec

 

 

In 2009, Eric Bridgeman traveled through remote parts of the Chimbu Province in the Highlands of Papua New Guinea, his maternal homeland. Having been born in Australia, he became increasingly conscious of his own “white” Australian presence in his native land. The Fight is based on ethnographic conventions, from National Geographic to Irving Penn, which once aided in the promotion and consumption of Papua New Guinea as Australia’s next frontier. By means of acting out Western stereotypes of tribal war, The Fight parodies the history of ethnographic representation and the subsequent impact on the national and cultural identity of Papua New Guinea.

The Fight documents two groups of men from Bridgeman’s own clan, the Yuri Alaiku, playfully attacking one another with spears and shields painted with artworks inspired by the bold, colorful motifs traditional to this region. Shields have been used in times of battle as potent symbols of power to attackers. Bridgeman, however, sees this icon of warfare as a protector of untold stories, undocumented histories and fading cultural practices, which have come to be integral to his subsequent practice.