The Women’s Courtyard, 2020
Site-specific installation, 6.5 X 5.5 metres.
Old Teacher’s College, The University of Sydney.
Mapping the architectural features of the courtyard with a drawing of bricks, The Women’s Courtyard inhabits the relationship between architecture and non-architecture as termed by Kraus: the ‘axiomatic structure’.
A pathway, constructed from five hundred bricks, passes through the space of the courtyard. As it doubles back on itself, participants are woven closer and further from one another, their perspectives altering with changes in direction and position.
Bricks, a physical extension of the space, speak to the site history of the Old Teacher’s College. Where the Teacher’s College now stands was once Armidale Gaol. When demolished, the bricks of the goal were used to lay the foundations of Sydney Teacher’s College. The very floors of the building will always be tied to the gaol by site history and material.
The history of the maze and the labyrinth is contemplative and tied to prayer, focus and patience. Participants in the courtyard are attentive to the pace, rhythm, and direction of their steps. As an open and enclosed space, the shapes of the courtyard are mimicked with lines of bricks. The repetition of straight lines of the building and the curves of the arches, seats and fountain are experienced through walking the path or can be seen from the windows of the floors above.