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 esign
of visual identity, promotional material, a travelling
exhibition and finally an interactive website for this
multi-disciplinary arts project based in rural NSW, engaging
disadvantaged young people and farming communities in
the Murray-Darling region affected by drought and climate
change. The website features a forum enabling exchange
between and beyond these two diverse groups; a blog component
to workshop audio-visual material produced by participants
on the ground; as well as more straightforward information
and documentation of the project as a whole. In this way
the site is envisaged as a key part of the overall project,
and indeed crucial to its sustainability once the three-year
involvement of Big hart comes to an end.
We also curated, project managed
and installed an exhibition at the Griffith Regional Gallery
showcasing the mid-term outcomes of the project. The exhibition
consisted of a selection of photographs printed as a short-run
newspaper at the local rural press, and a live ‘lab’
in the centre of the gallery where young people continued
to produce audio-visual material. These photographs were
distributed for free during the exhibition and have subsequently
travelled with the project for further display at remote
community locations
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The GOLD Lab installed in the Griffith Regional Art Gallery |
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Installation detail, Griffith Regional Art Gallery |
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Some of the photos and quotes rendered on newsprint producing
mini-newspapers presenting the project |
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Early in 2007 we made
our first trip to Griffith, where we conducted a workshop
with young people to help develop components of the logo and
website using photography and digital manipulation techniques.
Our logo design is based around a central “O”
showing individual Gold participants reflected in water. Every
time the logo appears, the “O” is represented
by a different image, drawn from a growing collection of photographs
taken by participants themselves, in and around Griffith and
other key Gold sites. |
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dynamic logo ‘schema’ was conceived of as a
way of engaging participants directly with the visual representation
of the Gold project. It also enables the logo to reflect
the diversity of individuals, perspectives and stories that
make up this unique project.
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Reflections of people in water were chosen to visualise the
project’s aim of encouraging audiences to look at water
(and at the Gold participants) in a new light, that is, as
a precious and undervalued resource. Water here is presented
as something tangible and immediate, responsive to human intervention
(fingers rippling the surface) and evoking the alchemy of
distortion and transformation.
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