Intergenerational knowledge reimagined at Triennial

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Intergenerational knowledge reimagined at Triennial

If Haus Yuriyal’s colours dazzle you, well, that’s the point.

The vivid greens, yellows, blues and more on the shields – known as kumans – created by the Papua New Guinea art collective create a bright, even hypnotising effect.

In the PNG highlands, the kumans would be painted in shades of ochre, brown and ******, and used by warriors to startle their opponents during attacks.

However, at the Queensland Art Gallery and Gallery of Modern Art’s Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art, beginning on Saturday, Haus Yuriyal are deploying the same disarming tactic with a different meaning.

“You can imagine 100 men coming at you, and each different design is bold geometry using colour,” curator Ruth McDougall tells AAP.

“The opponent gets dazzled and confused by all of these patterns.

“In this display, they’ve been changed to quite bold primary colours, and the artists are trying to dazzle their audience, to attract them and to send the message about their identity as Yuri people, being very solidly based in this tradition of shield-making.”

Rather than warfare, this exhibit reimagines the shields as items of community-building.

“They’re very explicitly trying to articulate the move from creating objects that are about inter-tribal warfare to ones of peace,” she said.

“Outside of the space is a garden, created by one of the women contributors, growing sugarcane, which again, is broken traditionally in that process of reconciliation and negotiation around conflict.

“So the whole of the display, which comes from an area that’s still quite troubled by conflict, but … has been very much trying to establish this discourse around peace.”

Haus Yuriyal was founded by Yuriyal Bridgeman, an ***********-PNG artist who shares his time between the two countries, and has nurtured the group across the Jiwaka, Simbu and Southern Highlands provinces.

Their exhibition in the sculpture garden is one of the eye-popping Pacific inclusions in this year’s triennial, the 11th to be hosted At QAGOMA.

The triennial aims to be “a gateway to the rapidly evolving artistic expression of Australia, Asia and the Pacific” by displaying modern-day creations from a raft of countries.

First Nations, ********* and diaspora cultures are offered the limelight, along with “collective, performative and community-driven modes of art-making that thrive in the region”.

Another such community model from the Pacific are the Torba Weavers, from the Vanuatu’s northernmost province of the same name.

Ms McDougall travelled to the island chain last year, finding great uptake from locals in innovative weaving – baskets, fashion, and more – and inviting them into the triennial.

Like Haus Yuriyal, the Torba Weavers centre inter-generational practices in their exhibition, though the ni-Vanuatu women also offer a commentary on the existential threat of climate change to their homelands.

Their island chain is nicknamed the ‘”doorway to disaster” for sheer number of storms which pass through, in a country ranked by the UN as the most at risk of natural hazards in the world.

“One of the works is this very simply made and quite quickly-made coconut leaf fan, and they’ve installed it like it’s a ceiling fan,” Ms McDougall says.

“When I asked talk to the artists about this, they said, ‘Oh, that’s because we want to show people that we still maintain a cool head, that we’re not getting upset’.

“‘We just, we just keep going forward. You just have to keep going forward with what the tools that you have.’ It’s so simple and beautiful.”

* The free-to-visit triennial runs through to April 2025.

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