A willingness to critique the medium of photography from within, to expand and sometimes shatter its limitations, to take the medium back to its future and forward to its past is at the core of lan de Gruchy's experiments with projections and illusions. He rarely exhibits inside art galleries, although many cultural institutions have been transformed by the artist's digital light-writing onto the buildings which house culture.
De Gruchy says that he sees buildings as screens. In the case of cultural institutions, such as art galleries, libraries and museums, it is clear that the artist seeks to exteriorise the concept of the culture within the building and/or to deconstruct or critique some aspect of it. The Library Projection (State Library of Victoria, 1992) converted the side of the building into a huge bookshelf by scaling-up a photograph taken in the reading room. Thus the interior was made public for the on-looker outside. In many respects Library Projection was a sentimental meditation on photography itself. The picture which was monumentalised on the side of the building was reminiscent of William Henry Fox Talbot's calotype of 1840, titled Books on Two Shelves. Once made, this connection draws out the narrative of light-writing that Fox Talbot gave to the history of photography. The metaphor of photography as lightwriting recurs throughout lan de Gruchy's projection works, as he engages with the language and history of the photographic media. One might say that de Gruchy is a type of magician since he exhibits in public spaces, creating illusionary entertainments for his audiences. He works with spectacle and uses architectural structures as screens. He also has worked in theatre and performance spaces, and in nightclubs in... The rest of this article is available to subscribers of Eyeline