2006

Visual Identity for Gelganyem and Kilkayi Trust, Western Australia.

• Logo   • Slogan   • Folder   • Booklet   • Project Sheets

Argyle Mine is a open cut diamond mine in the Kimberley’s, Western Australia, who has been digging since the 70’s over a underground Sacred Aboriginal  Women Site, named the Barramundi Gap.
In 1999 they found out they could dig underground, directly into the Sacred Site. In order to convince the Traditional Owner to let them do that, they promised generous financial compensation in order to help them reach a sustainable economy after the mine would have close, in 20 years time.
Two Trust were created to handle the repartition of the money: Gelganyem Trust and Kilkayi Trust. Each Trust is using an Aboriginal Painting of the Barramindi Dreaming as a logo, painted by two Women Elder who belong to the two main local communities.

Barramindi Dreaming

Tree women went to the river to go fishing. They put their traditional  trap into the water and wait for the fish. A big Barramindi  fall into the trap but manged to escape it by jumping over it, over a big hill off to another river.  The gap in the hill is now named Barramundi Gap. It’s a sacred site for aboriginal women and they do their initiation ceremony somewhere inside the hill.
In the Gidga Dreaming, the  the 3 women are changed into special rocks that we can still see today over the water.

Objective:
Create a visual identity that uses element from both paintings and gives the feeling it represents aboriginal interests.

On the Kilkayi trust page, you can see the blue river from the painting and 3 rocks, which are the 3 old women who turned into stone in the Gidga Dreaming.

The jumping fish represent the essence of this trust. First degree of lecture, is the barramundi from the Dreaming story, jumping over two hills, through a gap. So it’s an animal who gets out of its normal way, which is swimming, to jump in the air and save itself from being caught and killed.

That’s story teaches us to be creative, and go out of ones ways to avoid destruction and get out of a trap. That the very problematic of the aboriginal communities nowadays. That’s why the fish as to be jumping. It represent aboriginal people in action, traditional in the design but dynamic.The slogan, Jumping the gap: the fish is jumping over the Garramundi Gap, but it means jumping the gap between black and white, poverty and wealth, depression and pro-activity, past and future.Underneath, the diamonds are a promise of wealth for descendants.