Buxton Contemporary

Shifting perceptions at Buxton Contemporary

The Potter Museum of Art and Buxton Contemporary are both part of the University of Melbourne. The university tasked us with creating new identities for both galleries, considering their relationship to each other, their surroundings, their respective history and contemporaneity, and the nature of both collections.

With a vision to change how the Michael Buxton Collection is viewed in a museum context, the identity had to reflect Buxton Contemporary’s intention to challenge perceptions around contemporary Australian art. It also had to represent the space’s gutsy nature, its location at the University of Melbourne’s Southbank campus alongside the Victorian College of the Arts (VCA), and the youthful, dynamic Melbourne arts precinct that surrounds it.

Through a word mark and typographic system that constantly reconfigures its structure and position, the identity we created expresses Buxton’s values to inspire, to challenge, to be relevant and make art tangible through a system that is not fixed, but rather, is sensitive to its environment. Bold and somewhat brash, the sense of movement encapsulates a gallery with a non-conformist spirit – one that invites visitors on a journey and makes them part of the conversation.