Case Studies
Exhibitions
Installations
Stage Sets/Costumes

Australia 99 Stamp Expo
Rutherglen Wine Centre
Blessed Be The Work
Brambuk Cultural Centre
Toolangi Forest Centre
Post Master Gallery Fitout

Title: Brambuk Living Cultural Centre
Location: Halls Gap, Victoria
Exhibition Design: Rosemary Simons
Clients: Department of Conservation and Natural Resources and the Five Aboriginal Communities

Design Brief: Provide a brief introduction to the Aboriginal culture and history of the region, (Western Victoria), up to and including present day.

Design Notes: The rocky humps of the Grampians or Gariwerd, have been a constant over many thousands of years of human history. In a low slung building beside it, snippets of history from the past one hundred and fifty years formed the basis of this exhibition.

To bring home the fact that the story is an evolving one, what was then ‘cutting edge’ technology, in the from of laser discs and fibre optics, was employed to help illustrate it.

Taking a cue from the architect’s use of a large tree trunk as a beam support, the exhibition installation used multiple, smaller tree trunks, as its supporting framework.

Borrowing from Aboriginal designs which utilise patterns of concentric circles, the layout rippled out from the symbolic garden at it’s heart.
Representing the ‘Killing Times’, was a pathway partially obstructed by tree trunks on which were mounted contemporary quotes.

Early photographic portraits of Aboriginal people from the region, arranged along the spiralling pathway, charted, through their dress, the encroachment of European culture.

Once past a small hill of steps, topped by a construction of trunks and branches, gates and fences cut across the pathway. In this section, information on Aboriginal Reserves and Missions included a model of the Lake Conder Mission church.

Review: “The display area ....is suitably sombre....The tree trunk motif, which provides a vertical counterpoint to the building’s essential laterality, is here brutally expressive of the Aboriginal experience since white settlement. A very simple device has been chosen: the tree-columns are cut off above the fork, and do not reach the ceiling. Some are pasted with notices, ‘Despicable Race’, ‘Many Shot’ and the like.” (Jim Davidson ‘Australian Society’ December 1991 Brambuk Living Cultural Centre).

Acknowledgments:
Architect: Greg Burgess
Project Manager: Denis Rose
Photographer: Steven Wilkinson