2010 ERIC BRIDGEMAN: NEW PHOTOGRAPHS FROM KOKWARA TRAIL

EXHIBITION IMAGES

In late 2009, Eric Bridgeman spent three months living in remote parts of the Chimbu (Simbu) Province, his mother country in the Highlands of PNG, revisiting family ground and searching for a deeper understanding of the nation’s contemporary post-colonial state and the histories that have contributed to it. During his travels Bridgeman became increasingly conscious of his own ‘white’ Australian presence and the cameras that accompanied him. Behind these new experiences, Bridgeman began to recognize the significant contribution the “white man and his camera” made towards contemporary national and cultural identity in PNG.

This selection of reconstructed photographic scenarios aims to discuss and subvert the historical and contemporary permanence of picture taking in the daily lives of Papua New Guineans. Bridgeman questions the methods of photographic capture of the land and indigenous people of PNG during the 20th century and beyond. In ‘New Photographs From Kokwara Trail’ (2010) Bridgeman poses alternative scenarios and individuals that resist the categorical and archetypal depictions that once aided in the promotion and consumption of PNG as Australia’s next frontier. “New Photographs from Kokwara Trail” will be Bridgeman’s first exhibition with SSFA.

This project was made possible with the assistance of the Australia Council for the Arts, Emerging Artist New Work Grant 2009

Eric Bridgeman was born in Queensland in 1986 and attained a Bachelor of Photography at the Queensland College of Art, Griffith University, Brisbane. Bridgeman has had solo exhibitions at Canberra Contemporary Art Centre, Gallery 4A and the Queensland Centre for Photography. Bridgeman has also been shortlisted in the Basil Sellers Ian Potter Art Prize 2010 and participated in group exhibitions at Australian Centre for Photography, Sydney and the University of Queensland Art Museum.