Laxmi Isabella Andrews
The Fold
The private-public interior thoroughfare of the Grafton Centre is policed by ‘Hosts’. Certain ‘normative’ behaviours are allowed, and favourable; others are not. The realm of this authority stretches to the Centre’s outer walls: three-storeys of unfenestrated brick, fortresslike. But, while the Grafton’s walls are not glazed, they do, at times, fold: into service doors and vents, forming niches. Here, un-surveilled, a little life is found, independent of the commercial activities within. A liminal realm emerges, strewn with the discarded materials from which we have built this exhibition. In my proposition, each niche becomes the generator of its own fractal plan, excavating into the leasable area of the Grafton. Previously incidental, these tectonic forms have been sampled, repeated, and appropriated, to make the Grafton Centre’s hostile external walls habitable. There is no defined programme for the resulting spaces. Rather, they open a latency in the Grafton’s rigidity: counterproposals for how the centre may be used, whether as a space to rest, eat, find shelter. Beginning with a recess in a wall, the niches become a civic gesture, suggesting a form of generosity towards an undervalued public realm. 12