FREE | Friday Art Talks | Friday Art Talks Artist talk with Yuriyal Bridgeman

Name: FREE | Friday Art Talks | Friday Art Talks Artist talk with Yuriyal Bridgeman
Start: 2025-10-10T02:00:00+11:00
End: 2025-10-10T02:45:00+11:00
Location: Parkes Place East, Canberra, ACT, Australia, Australian Capital Territory 2600

Schedule

Fri Oct 10 2025 at 02:00 am to 02:45 am

UTC+11:00

Location

Parkes Place East, Canberra, ACT, Australia, Australian Capital Territory 2600 | Canberra, CT

This is a free drop-in event.
Bookings are not required, but capacity is limited.
Please arrive early to avoid disappointment.
Duration: 45 mins including Q&A
Join artist Yuriyal Bridgeman for a talk about his work in the exhibition Bilong Papua New Guinea.
In 2015, Yuriyal founded the arts collective ‘Haus Yuriyal’ in the Waghi Valley of the Papua New Guinean Highlands with family from the Yuri tribe. Yuriyal will share his experiences working with family, tribe and extended local communities to facilitate a renewal of traditional models of learning, such as the ‘hausman’ (men’s house), while navigating local and tribal politics. He will discuss his efforts to bring about change in his community through artmaking, exchange, inclusion and survival instincts.
Yuriyal’s work Kuman (shield paintings) were created as part of this collaboration, which launched an exciting redirection of traditional shield production and design. Yuriyal will explain some of the ways that the ‘kuman’ (Yuri language) or ‘shield’, specific to the Waghi region and his maternal homeland of Simbu Province, can be understood as a language and mode of communication; an extension of the body; and signifier of both peace and war.
Yuriyal Bridgeman is a multi-disciplinary artist based in Australia and Papua New Guinea. He works in photography, video, sculpture, installation, drawing, and painting. His painting practice is strongly influenced by his connection to men’s practices of his tribe, Yuri, in the Simbu province of PNG. He co-founded the artist collective Haus Yuriyal (Jiwaka, PNG) with his family members, in which he serves in the role of artist and facilitator of the group’s contemporary art projects.
Bilong Papua New Guinea marks the 50th anniversary of Papua New Guinea’s independence and the birth of a new nation on September 16, 1975. Each of the works on display presents a story, reflecting on cultural heritage, historical moments, the influence of ancestors, Christianity, kastom, societal changes and new technologies.